Gender Construction and Negotiation in the Chinese EFL Classroom [1 ed.] 9781443830645, 9781443829052

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Gender Construction and Negotiation in the Chinese EFL Classroom

Gender Construction and Negotiation in the Chinese EFL Classroom

By

Huajing Zhao

Gender Construction and Negotiation in the Chinese EFL Classroom, by Huajing Zhao This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Huajing Zhao All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2905-6, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2905-2

I would like to dedicate this book to my beloved parents Mr. Shunliu Zhao and Ms. Lanfen Ye Parents in law Mr. Zhaohe Gan and Ms. HuaZheng And my husband Dr. Lian Gan



TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures and Tables .......................................................................... xi List of Abbreviations ................................................................................. xii Acknowledgements .................................................................................. xiii Part I: Background to the Research Chapter One................................................................................................. 2 Introduction 1.1 Concepts of gender, gender construction and gender negotiation 1.2 The significance of examining gender construction and its negotiation in relation to SLL in the school context 1.3 Organisation of the book Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 13 Second Language Learning and Identity Theories 2.1 Sociolinguistic approaches to SLL 2.2 Learning from a sociocultural perspective 2.3 Theories of identity Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 26 China as a Research Context 3.1 Gender—an under-researched issue in China 3.2 Communicative language teaching in the EFL class in Chinese secondary schools 3.3 Development of research questions Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 33 Methodological Issues 4.1 The case study strategy 4.2 Data elicitation and collection 4.3 Data analysis 4.4 Reflexive discussion on the methodology of the research



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Table of Contents

Part II: Research Findings and Discussion Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 90 Students’ Representations of ‘Ideal’ Girls and Boys in the Chinese Community 5.1 Ideal female characterisations 5.2 Ideal male characterisations 5.3 Acceptable ways of performing gender: girls’ and boys’ differential views 5.4 The influence of culturally idealised gender norms on students’ choice of either science or arts classes 5.5 Summary Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 119 Students’ Representations of English Girls and Boys 6.1 The construction of views about English girls and boys 6.2 Sources of the representations of English girls and boys 6.3 Summary Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 142 Students’ Reactions to Gender Representations of English Girls and Boys 7.1 Students’ claims about responses to gender representation of English girls and boys 7.2 Students’ claims about advantages of negotiating gender as EFL learners 7.3 Behaviours enacted in tasks as attempts to behave like English girls and boys 7.4 Constraints students encountered in negotiating gender as EFL learners 7.5 Students’ identification of key sites for their negotiation of the gendered self in English 7.6 Summary Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 183 Good Students or Good Girls/Boys: Negotiating Roles 8.1 Negotiation as reflected in choice of task partner 8.2 Negotiation as reflected in willingness to act as group representatives 8.3 Study of three representative cases in the research 8.4 Summary



Gender Construction and Negotiation in the Chinese EFL Classroom

ix

Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 220 Educational and Pedagogical Implications of the Research 9.1 The four interrelated ‘spaces’ 9.2 Educational implications for assessment of language learners 9.3 Educational implications for teacher training 9.4 Pedagogical implications for pair-grouping Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 234 Conclusion Bibliography ............................................................................................ 241 Appendix A ............................................................................................. 254 Example of Daily Classroom Seating Arrangement Appendix B.............................................................................................. 256 Description of the Four Tasks Appendix C.............................................................................................. 259 Examples of Questions in the Semi-structured Outline for Pre-task Interview with Individual Students Appendix D ............................................................................................. 261 Examples of Guideline Questions for Focus Group Discussions Appendix E.............................................................................................. 263 Transcription Conventions for Communicative Tasks and Focus Group Discussions Appendix F .............................................................................................. 265 Selected Comments about Rachael Appendix G ............................................................................................. 267 Selected Comments about Monica Appendix H ............................................................................................. 268 Selected Comments about Ross Appendix I ............................................................................................... 270 Summary of Research Methods and Data Collected in the Study



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Appendix J............................................................................................... 275 Selective Findings from the Tasks in the MPhil Project Index........................................................................................................ 277



LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 4-1 The case and sampling ............................................................. 41 Table 4-1 Sample size of student participants ........................................... 44 Table 4-2 Types of observation conducted in the research................... 45-46 Table 4-3 Types of interview conducted in the research ...................... 53-54 Table 4-4 Analytical framework for communicative tasks................... 68-69 Table 4-5 Analytical framework for focus group discussion about the television series ‘Friends’................................................ 70-71 Table 4-6 List of coding categories in pre-task interview .................... 72-73 Table 4-7 Overview of the data analysis and data presentation in the research ......................................................................... Centrefold



LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

L2 TL FL CA DA CLT EFL ESL SLA SLL SLE UEE CsofP NNCET



Second Language Target Language Foreign Language Conversation Analysis Discourse Analysis Communicative Language Teaching English as a Foreign Language English as a Second Language Second Language Acquisition Second Language Learning Second Language Education University Entrance Examination Communities of Practice New National Curriculum of English Teaching

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is developed form my PhD thesis which I undertook in the University of Cambridge. Hence, I would like to first show my great thankfulness to Dr Edith Esch, who, as my supervisor, has played a pivotal role in the intellectual journey of my PhD. She has always been resourceful and dedicated much of her time and energy in guiding me to complete the research and the dissertation. I would also like to thank both my internal examiner, Dr Michael Evans, and external examiner, Prof. Jean-Marc Dewaele, for their critical comments of the thesis. Moreover, I also wish to thank all the other teachers in our RSLE group, Ms Linda Fisher and Dr Andrie Yiakoumetti, for their kindness and enthusiasm in offering various kinds of help and critical comments throughout my PhD study. I particularly owe my sincere gratitude to my beloved parents who have always stood next to me, sharing happiness and sadness with me throughout the years. Without their financial and spiritual support, the undertaking of my research could not have been successfully achieved. I would also like to express my love to my two elder sisters and younger brother. They have also shown me their love, care and support all the time. My deepest love goes to my husband as well for his intellectual and emotional support. It is his company over a long period that has made my Cambridge life more colourful and enjoyable. Special gratitude also goes to my father- and mother-in-law who created a really cosy home atmosphere for us all along. This study could not have been completed without the help from the school leaders, teachers and students who were involved in the project. Their kind support and participation have been invaluable to the study. Last but not least, I would like to thank all my dear classmates and friends, both in and outside the university. They have ungrudgingly shown their spiritual support and encouragement to me throughout my PhD studies.



PART I: BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

Language learning involves the identities of learners (Coates 1998). Every time language learners speak, they are not only exchanging information with their interlocutors but engaging in identity construction and negotiation through (re)organising a sense of who they are and how they are related to the social world (Bourdieu 1977). As Norton and Toohey (2002:115) put it, “Language itself is not only a linguistic system of signs and symbols, it is also a complex social practice in which the value and meaning ascribed to an utterance are determined in part by the value and meaning ascribed to the person who speaks.”

In other words, language functions as a symbolic resource for constructing and managing personal, social and cultural meanings and identities (Kendall and Tannen 2005). It is not only that we speak the language, but also that the language we use indicates who we are. Gender identity is important in people’s lives socially. It can be one of the most powerful components of an individual’s social identity (Young 1999). Many researchers use the study of language as a lens through which to view social and cultural aspects of gender relations (Tannen 1990; Bulter 1999; Ochs 1997). As argued by Weedon (1997), language use is not only the place where various forms of social organisation and their likely social and political consequences are defined and contested in day-to-day social interactions; it is also the place where our sense of ourselves, including our sense of being gendered, is constructed. From such a point of view, language appears as one important means by which gender is enacted and constructed. The following questions then arise: “If we construct gender when learning our language through the process of socialisation, what about when we are learning and being taught another language?”; “Do we negotiate our

Introduction

gender identity when we learn a second language1?”; “If yes, how?” The current research is an attempt to explore these questions. In the year 2006, I did my MPhil project which aimed to explore the role of gender in peer-group interactions in a Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom mainly by examining students’ linguistic performance in interactions. The data collected from the project showed that female and male students did not do the same things as L2 learners in interactions. They oriented themselves towards different aspects of English and practiced different skills in doing a task. The most significant reason lay in the fact that when girls and boys were performing communicative tasks, they demonstrated both verbal and non-verbal habits associated with expected ideal gender norms (e.g. girls learning about the details and boys learning how to give directions). In other words, they tended to bring certain pre-existing gender-based ideologies and prejudices into their interactions, either consciously or unconsciously, which affected their English language learning. Then what can or does learning a second/foreign language do to students’ construction and negotiation of gender? How do students construct and negotiate their gender identity in the course of learning a second/foreign language? These questions were then identified as the main research focus of the current research.

1.1 Concepts of gender, gender construction and gender negotiation Recent work in sociolinguistics generally, and in language and gender research in particular, has promoted dynamic notions of social identities to replace the previous categories which tended to be fixed and essentialist (Cameron 1995; Schiffrin 1996; Ehrlich 1997). With respect to gender identity, more and more sociolinguists have abandoned the assumption that the meaning of gender is shared across cultures and that it is fixed, unproblematic and can be easily isolated from other aspects of social identity. Instead, they view gender as something individuals do and perform, as opposed to something individuals are or have (West and Zimmerman 1987; Bulter 1999; Piller and Pavlenko 2001). In other words, they do not simply equate gender, which is more appropriate for 1

In the research, the terms “second language” (L2) and “foreign language” (FL) were not distinguished and were used as interchangeable.

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Chapter One

“distinguishing people on the basis of their sociocultural behaviour, including speech”, with sex, which refers to categories “distinguished by biological characteristics” (Holmes 2002:150). Human beings are social beings, hence it is necessary for us to distinguish them by their sociocultural behaviour. In this book, terms such as “gender role” and “gender identity” are used to refer to “gender role/identity as a girl or as a boy”. However, these terms are never satisfactory because I do not want to be essentialist about gender. It is for convenience and for the purpose of the book that I decided to use them to distinguish between “gender” and “sex”. In addition, for the purpose of the book, terms such as “female” and “male”, “woman” and “man”, “girl” and “boy” were used interchangeably. Since gender is viewed as a social, historical, and cultural construct, it comes as no surprise that the construction of gender may vary over time within a culture, as well as across cultures (Pavlenko and Piller 2001:22). In other words, once one is turned into a gendered social being, one is not merely being constructed by the community, the society one lives in or one’s family (in consideration of the fact that the construction of gender is grounded in human beings’ socialisation history and must be affected by the traditional gender categories), but individuals can also negotiate their gender through talk in interaction. The whole notion of negotiation is linked to the notion of discourse in which individuals question themselves in the course of interaction. Once one interacts, he/she can choose whether or not to comply with and express himself/herself in the way other people think he/she should. Such a choice involves agreeing or disagreeing with the label people wish to attach to him/her. If the construction of gender varies culturally and contextually, whether the learning of L2 and the second language learning (SLL) classroom can become a prevailing site to open up opportunities for students to construct and negotiate their gender identities becomes a legitimate area of inquiry. Since I do not believe there is any fixed behaviour that can be labelled as that which is characteristic of a Chinese girl or boy (the “Chinese gender”) or an English girl or boy (the “English gender”)2, the term gender negotiation rather than gender reconstruction is used throughout the research.

2

In the book, treating gender as a dynamic and fluid concept that is constructed and negotiated in interactions, the terms like “Chinese girl / boy” and “English girl / boy” were used only for convenience purposes.

Introduction

The notion of “interaction” is crucial in both concepts of “gender construction” and “gender negotiation”. Gender should not be treated as a given parameter that can be taken for granted but one that is communicatively produced. Evans (2002:4) declares that identities, including gender identity, are not stable things but are an effect of interaction with others and with larger concepts that are conveyed through circulating discourses. Bulter (1999) also argues that gendered selves are determined neither by nature nor by nurture but are the effects of day-to-day “acting” in ways normatively defined as masculine or feminine. Through interaction with societal norms, individuals continually fashion their physical appearance as well as their language and bodily movements as they “do” being women or men. In short, we have to treat identities and subject positions as bodily and linguistic enactments of discourse at particular times and in particular places (Block 2007:17). As a result, in the research, adolescents’ construction and negotiation of their gender identity would be mainly examined through their discursive interactions (verbal and nonverbal) with their peers and with the researcher in context. Language use deals with the notion of gender in different ways. It impacts, for example, on the way mothers talk to their babies, teachers to students and so on. Baron and Kotthoff (2001) argue that the new-born baby has no gender, but merely a sex. However, it is with the claim “It is a girl/boy!” that the sociocultural imposition of gender and associated social expectations begin. In fact, the language itself projects gender identities onto people even before they are born. Parents will choose different names which orient their thinking about the baby to be born. They may also not use the same form of baby talk to a little boy and to a little girl. They may project different hopes and images of girls and boys and of their futures as well. They may think of girls having a good husband as more successful, while thinking of boys having a promising career as more successful. As Borker (1980) argues, the links between language and gender are clearly not naturally but culturally constructed. With gender seen as a system of social relations and discursive practices, the goal of the study of language and gender becomes twofold: on the one hand, to investigate the effects of gender on individuals’ linguistic practice and performance (e.g. my MPhil project); on the other hand, to study ways in which gender is constructed and negotiated in multiple discourses (Pavlenko and Piller 2001:23). The current study has been developed to be a more intensive study to investigate how gender is constructed and negotiated in the course of learning a second/foreign

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Chapter One

language not only by examining students’ behaviour in interactions, their rationalisation of their own and partner’s behaviour, but also through exploring their perceptions and attitudes towards issues concerning gender and SLL in the school community.

1.2 The significance of examining gender construction and its negotiation in relation to SLL in the school context 1.2.1 The aim of second language learning and teaching The study of a foreign language should lead to a positive understanding of not only the linguistic knowledge of the target language (TL) but also the sociocultural practices and the TL-mediated public personae they wish to project (Segalowitz 1976; Robinson 1985; Bardov-Harlig 1999; Kasper and Rose 2002; Rose and Kasper 2001; Block 2007). As argued by Riley (2007), learning a foreign/second language extends the range of meanings of which the individual is capable. It enables us to form a richer conception of self rather than simply being ourselves (Joseph 2004). Competent L2 learners should not only know how to use grammatical rules but also social ones (Segalowitz 1976). However, the traditional language teaching pedagogy, which focuses more on the linguistic forms of the TL, makes students more likely to separate language from the culture of the people who use it. It is communicative language teaching (CLT), which aims to develop students’ communicative competence, that caters for this requirement and has gradually moved into the mainstream of the foreign language teaching pedagogy. As argued by Pavlenko and Piller (2001:7), “Successful L2 learning may entail a modification of one’s gender performance in order to ensure validation and legitimacy in the target language and culture.” Since CLT aims to develop learners’ ability to use language in real communication, it raises the crucial issue of the way learners act socially and how they negotiate their social identities, including gender identity, in a different cultural and social context. This makes the SLL classroom a fertile environment in which to examine the issue of language and gender construction and its negotiation. Moreover, the wide use of communicative tasks in CLT also makes the explorations of learners’ gender negotiation convenient and feasible in a naturally

Introduction

setting.3

1.2.2 Lack of research on gender and SLL from a constructionist point of view The field of language and gender has become a particularly lively and vibrant area of linguistic inquiry; nevertheless, most prior research has focused on monolingual settings (Pavlenko and Piller 2001). One reason is that discussion of the second language acquisition (SLA)4 field was dominated by an “input-output metaphor of learning and cognition”, in which mind and brain are regarded as the “containers” of both learning processes and learning products (van Lier 2000:257). As a consequence, less attention was given to the learning processes, individual variables or the social context in which the L2 was learned and used (McKay and Wong 1996). More recent sociocultural approach has been able to offer a framework within which people can conceptualise individual learners within their communities as human beings who are capable social agents and can change things (see section 2.2 of the book for a detailed clarification of the sociocultural approach). Although recent research in second language teaching and learning has acknowledged the complexities and challenges that learners confront when they participate in a new linguistic community, little attention has been given to the construction of gender identities in the language classroom (Piller and Pavlenko 2001). Instead, most of them primarily deal with the differences in L2 acquisition between male and female learners (Pellegrino 2005: 141). As pointed out by Norton (1995:464), SLA theorists have not developed a comprehensive theory of social identity that integrates the language learner and the language learning context. In particular, before the 1990s, there was little or no work examining how language learners “position themselves and are positioned by others depending on where they are, who they are with and 3

In the book, four terms were used interchangeably to refer to the student participants: “L2/EFL learner”, “L2/EFL user”, “student” and “adolescent”. The way I address the student participants either as “girls/boys”, “female/male students” does not mean that I emphasise their identity either as a “student” or as a gendered social being. They were just used interchangeably. 4 In the book, the terms of “second language acquisition” (SLA) and “second language learning” (SLL) were used interchangeably. I used SLL theory to cover both SLL theory and SLA studies

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Chapter One

what they are doing” (Eckert and McConnel-Ginet 1992:464). Later on, due to the systematic and extensive borrowing from contiguous social science fields of inquiry, the notion of identity in SLL has been gradually developed. Such a lack of research on gender and second language learning from a constructionist point of view made the current project meaningful and interesting. Moreover, most of the research focuses on immigrants’ experience (e.g. Blackledge 2001; Goldstein 2001; Ohara 2001; Teutsch-Dwyer 2001)5. In fact, the majority of the foreign language learners learn the TL in a local context which is referred to as a “FL context”6 by Block (2007). Their experience of constructing and negotiating gender identity in the course of SLL might be very different from that of immigrant people. Research on it should consider important social and educational connotations. For example, the research conducted by Ohara (2001) showed that American English female learners who were learning Japanese in Japan did not always choose to conform to the high pitch level used by typical Japanese females in Japan because it downplayed their status as women in the matter of communication. However, since they were perceived as foreigners there, they did not care greatly about the hidden cost of not conforming to the high level of pitch (i.e. being excluded from the mainstream Japanese society). Their identities displayed at that moment not only showed them to be a female but also a foreign visitor. In other words, what they were facing was different from what local Japanese women face. In all, the review of these studies oriented me towards conducting research with adolescents who were learning EFL in a local secondary school setting. 5

For the purpose of the book, “immigrant” refers both to those people who resident in the targeted language country either permanently or just for a short stay to learn language or work there 6 “FL” refers to “the context of millions of primary school, secondary school, university and further education students around the world who rely on their time in classrooms to learn a language which is not the typical language of communication in their surrounding environment” (Block 2003:5). Block (2007:144) argues that the foreign language (FL) context contrasts manifestly with naturalistic adult immigrant settings where there is the potential for partial or full immersion in the target language (TL) community. It also differs notably from the context of studying abroad context where FL classroom instruction gives way to “being there”, which increases the potential for immersion in TL-mediated environments and the emergence of new TL-mediated subject positions.

Introduction

As far as the data collection tool was concerned, in the previous studies interview was the principal tool used to learn about immigrant participants’ own account of their life or experience of study in the “new” country (e.g. Blackledge 2001; Palvenko 2001). Few of the studies observed participants’ in site performance and negotiation of their gender identity in interactions very closely. In other words, most of the approaches have been developed on the basis of narratives provided by immigrant talking about themselves (about the “I”). They neglected the fact that each individual’s identity is not only individual but also collective. Answers to the question of “who we are” should not emerge only from our own perceptions of “who we are”, but also from how we are perceived by others and how we actually perform “we” in interaction (Joseph 2004). As a result, the current research tried to probe into the issue of gender negotiation in relation to SLL by both examining adolescents’ performance of gender in interactions and their viewpoints concerning relevant issues to discover how they perceived themselves, how they are perceived by others and how they behaved in interactions as gendered social beings in the course of learning English as a foreign language. In addition, all the studies that I found interesting following the poststructuralist stream provided evidence of the impossibility of discussing issues of gender identity outside a specific context. In other words, there is no way of talking about gender and gender negotiation in SLL without seriously taking the social, cultural, historical and political context into account other than the linguistic context. The work conducted by Heller (2001) in a bilingual school tried to understand how the naturalising ideologies which legitimate positions of power are constructed and contested, and with what consequences for whom (2001:259). The approach taken by Heller and her colleagues showed that issues could not arise if there was no careful, in-depth investigation of the particular school. Any quantitative design is going to be insufficient for an investigation of the complexity of gender as a social and cultural construct and the variation that gender relations can exhibit across speech communities and social contexts (Ehrlich 2001:109). If researchers want to study what goes on in terms of negotiation at the micro level, they have to orientate themselves towards a qualitative study and pay attention to the cultural context of the educational institutions. This review of the previous studies oriented me towards a case study design within the time limit of a PhD project to allow for in-depth investigation of the issue of gender (see section 4.1 for presentation of

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Chapter One

the case study strategy).

1.2.3 The secondary school setting as an important site in which to investigate gender issues Among the three central areas of interaction between SLL and gender, namely institutional/ public, private and educational settings, comparatively little work has been conducted in the educational setting, especially at the secondary school level. The school is an institution of social and cultural reproduction (Heller 2001). The habitual roles allocated by communities and societies to male and female students are reflected in the school, the classroom and the curriculum. Arnot (2002:6) claims that “whether structurally or culturally, education [is] analysed as a major site for the reproduction of the class structure and its unequal relations of power”. The notion of “male” and “female” school subjects can be taken as a typical example: science, mathematics and technology are usually rated as “masculine” by teachers and students and preferred by boys, while English, humanities and music tend to be regarded as “feminine” and preferred by girls (Arnot, et al. 1998). In addition, it is often assumed that female students are more likely to comply with argument while male students should play a more competitive role in the process of discussion. Issues of education should be addressed first and foremost in terms of identities and modes of belonging, and only secondarily in terms of skills and information. It (education) must strive to open new dimensions for the negotiation of the self (Wenger 1998:263). A look at educational settings allows us “to understand how they contribute to the production and reproduction of social categories, and to the construction and distribution of what counts as knowledge” (Heller 2005:256). On the one hand, students may “Construct themselves as gendered by habitually engaging in the social practices of a speech community that are symbolically and practically associated with masculinity and femininity or some mixture thereof” (Ehrlich 1997:440).

On the other hand, some of them may possibly reject these roles prescribed by the external communities and societies which are based on the simple label of sex differences. Instead, they may need certain free spaces in which to behave as they would like as capable social beings. In

Introduction

11

particular, adolescents aged around 15 to 17 (at secondary school level) are in a comparatively unstable situation concerning their sense of identity and their ability to change. The SLL classroom generally, and the Chinese EFL classroom specifically, especially within a communicative language teaching setting, may be able to offer this kind of free space to probe into the above issue since it provides individual learners sufficient opportunities to play roles in all kinds of tasks, whereby both female and male students are able to become aware of other aspects of themselves and their peers and hence reposition themselves if possible. Therefore this research targeted students in secondary schools as its main research participants and examined how they construct and negotiate their gender identity in the course of learning English as a foreign language. The originality of this research lies in the following points: firstly, the fact that males and females do not speak or act in the same way has been demonstrated by many researchers in sociolinguistics in the past 50 years, whereas in this research, although I also examined both male and female students’ interactional behaviour, my main focus was not whether girls or boys do the same things, but how they construct and negotiate their gender identity in L2. Education is there to help people to become conscious of not only personal but also social issues and help them to develop. This research therefore tends to reveal the importance of second language education (SLE), within the specific context of learning English as a foreign language in schools in China, in helping both students and teachers to become conscious of the way adolescents construct and negotiate their gendered selves and use this as a tool of proper behaviour change if it is necessary and expected. In other words, the research was interested in whether socialising boys and girls into negotiating gender in the L2 classroom provides the opportunity not only for language learning outcomes but also education outcomes. Secondly, by examining the potential social, cultural and individual value that SLE brings to the students’ self-consciousness and self-development within the school community, it may provide useful information for the debate not only about the role EFL plays in the school curriculum but also the role EFL plays in the whole society. Thirdly, unlike most prior studies on gender and SLA, which focus on immigrants’ experience, the research targeted mainstream students’ gender negotiation in the course of learning L2 in a local state school context. Finally, since this research tackled the issue of gender construction and its negotiation, an issue that is seldom considered in Chinese society, especially within the school community, it brings fresh

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Chapter One

air to the research on gender and second language learning in China (see chapter 3 for the clarification of the Chinese research context).

1.3 Organisation of the book The book is organised into two parts. The first part provides background information to the research and is composed of four chapters. Chapter 1 mainly gives the justification for the research topic by introducing the key concepts of the research and discussing the originality of the project. The following Chapter 2 reviews relative second language learning and identities theories, including “sociolinguistic approaches to SLL”, “learning from a sociocultural perspective”, and “multi-faceted nature of identity”. In Chapter 3, the Chinese research context is discussed in detail, including the Chinese sociocultural background (i.e. gender is an under-researched issue in China) and the wide adoption of CLT in the Chinese EFL classroom in secondary schools. The chapter concludes with the formulation of the research questions developed in the study. Chapter 4 discusses the following methodological issues, including the adopted case study strategy, the data elicitation and collection processes, the data analysis approaches, as well as reflexive discussion on the methodology. Part 2 of the book pursues the research findings and discussion and is composed of five chapters. It starts with Chapter 5, which reports findings about students’ representations of “ideal” girls and boys in Chinese community. The following Chapter 6 deals with students’ representations of English girls and boys7. Students’ reactions to these gender representations are discussed in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 considers the findings concerning students’ identity negotiation between the social role of being a good student and being a good girl or boy in discourse. The educational and pedagogical implications of the research are discussed in Chapter 9. The whole book closes with Chapter 10 which provides a conclusion to the whole project.

7

By convention, in the book, the term "English girls and boys” was used to refer to British, American, Canadian and so on because it is the way learners of English in China at that age (i.e. students participating in the study) see the world. Although it is not what I believe to be true, for the same reason, the term “English countries” is used to refer to “native-English-speaking countries” (see section 9.3 of the book for further discussion).

CHAPTER TWO SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING AND IDENTITY THEORIES

This chapter reviews relevant SLL and identities theories of the study, including the sociolinguistic approaches to SLL (in section 2.1), learning from a sociocultural perspective (in section 2.2), and the multi-faceted nature of “identity” (in section 2.3). Language and identity are crucially intertwined (Edwards 1985; Bruner 1990). The concept of an individual’s social identity has been employed by several researchers as a way of viewing and explaining the patterns of language use and the language attitudes of bilinguals (see McGroarty 1998; Young 1999, for a review). Norton (2000:5) tries to develop a more dynamic view of identity. For him, language, identity and context interact mutually: “I foreground the role of language as constitutive of and constituted by a language learner’s social identity…It is through language that a person negotiates a sense of self within and across different sites at different points in time, and it is through language that a person gains access to – or is denied access to – powerful social networks that give learners the opportunity to speak.”

Ehrlich (1997) indicates that the types of social identity constructed by learners in a target language will be the result of learners’ own social positionings, as well as their perceptions of social identities in the target culture (also see Lantolf 1993; Siegal 1994, 1996; Kramsch and Hoene 1995). Theories in the field of second language learning which claim that social factors are secondary are thus criticised (for a review, see Polanyi 1995). Our identities are not just something we can decide by ourselves. Instead, they are the product of social interaction between individuals and other members of society (Riley 2007). The value ascribed to speech cannot be understood in isolation from the person who speaks and that the person who speaks cannot be understood in isolation from larger networks of social relationships (Bourdieu 1984). Hence, a context-sensitive

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Chapter Two

approach has to be adopted in examining learners’ gender negotiations as L2 learners in discourse.

2.1 Sociolinguistic approaches to SLL Acquisition and use of language take place in a social context; thus it is important for SLA researchers to understand the ways in which social context and the acquisition and use of a second language are related (Young 1999). Piller and Pavlenko (2001) argue that SLA has been characterised by an almost ubiquitous gender-blindness due to the prevalence of psycholinguistic and Universal Grammar approaches in the field, which assume all human beings inherit a universal set of principles and parameters that control the shape human languages can take, and which are what make human languages similar to one another (Mitchell and Myles 2004:54). It is then from a sociolinguistic point of view, which commits itself to explaining why people speak differently in different social contexts, that the role of gender in language use and learning has become influential and makes it a particular interesting issue for research in the field of language education. Sociolinguistics, or the study of language in use, views language as a social practice (Mitchell and Myles 2004). It emerged as a multidisciplinary endeavour to provide an understanding of language behaviour giving due regard to the context in which it was spoken (Giles and Smith 1979:45). In short, it is concerned with the relationship between language and the social context in which it is used (Holmes 2002). Sociolinguists believe that the way people talk is influenced by the social context in which they are talking. By examining the way people use language in different communities, rich information may be obtained, including the way language functions, the social relationships in a particular community, and the way people signal aspects of their social identity through their language, including gender identity of course (Holmes 2002). In other words, individuals’ speech styles vary in different contexts according to who they are and to whom who they are speaking, where and when they are talking, as well as how they are feeling (Holmes 2002). Sociolinguists aim to not only describe those sociolinguistic variations, but also, if possible, explain why it happens. Like those sociocultural theorists, sociolinguists also believe that learning is a collaborative affair, and that language knowledge is socially constructed

Second Language Learning and Identity Theories

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through interaction (Mitchell and Myles 2004). No language has meaning except with reference to how it is framed (Bateson 1972; Goffman 1974) or contextualised (Becker 1984; Gumperz 1982). Interactional sociolinguists emphasise how implied meanings can be derived from details of interaction that signal the appropriate cultural frame of reference for interpretation (Bucholtz 2003). Gender-related differences in language use are one aspect of the most pervasive linguistic differences in society reflecting females’ and males’ social status and power differences (Holmes 2002). Sociolinguists have traditionally studied the role of language in structuring the identities of individuals and the culture of entire communities and societies (Storch 2002). The ability to participate appropriately in relevant speech events has been seen as an important part of communicative competence (Mitchell and Myles 2004:1).There are two main strands of sociolinguistic theorising about second language use and second language development. One strand is the quantitative study of second language variation focusing on interlanguage variability at the lexical and morphological levels. From this viewpoint, the setting of language use, as well as participants’ cultural background, gender, social status and other social categories can be described independently of language use (Young 1999). This stream of variationist study that codes aspects of social identity as categorical and unvarying across contexts attracts criticism from researchers who view the performance of social identities as variable across social, situational and interactional contexts (Ehrlich 2001; Schiffrin 1996). The other strand deals with second language learning in a broad way, embedded in its social context. Such work is typically qualitative and interpretive in nature, using the techniques of ethnography or conversational analysis to provide accounts of the social processes of second language interaction and development (Mitchell and Myles 2004). From this perspective, context is viewed as emergent and dynamic, and social categories, like gender and social status, are negotiated through interaction (Young 1999). Influenced by the general research on gender and language, researchers in the SLA field have recently called for the need to conduct more research, focusing on ways in which gender mediates the learning and use of additional languages, and on ways in which gender relations and performances may be transformed in the process of second language socialisation (Pavlenko and Piller 2001:17). In terms of my current study, I responded to this call and conformed to the second research strand. What I am interested in is not whether gender

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mediates students’ second language learning, use and performance per se, but how students negotiate their gender identity as a Chinese girl or as a Chinese boy via the use of English as a foreign language in interactions.

2.2 Learning from a sociocultural perspective Many SLA theories view L2 learners as passive vessels for receiving input and producing output. Neither the input hypothesis1 advanced by Krashen (1982; 1985; 1998) nor the output hypothesis put forward by Swain (1985; 1995) greatly challenges the concept of “an autonomous language module or cognitive mechanisms at work within the individual learner” (Mitchell and Myles 2004:159). Sociocultural theory in contrast questions the oversimplification of the model of input and output as an explanation for SLA. It questions the view of language as individual minds acquiring linguistic, or even sociolinguistic, competence. Learners, from this perspective, are seen as members of social and historical collectivities rather than individual language producers (Lantolf and Genung 2003; Lantolf 2002). The fundamental assumption of sociocultural theory is that “learning and development occur as people participate in the sociocultural activities of their community” (Rogoff 1994:209). Learning is a mediated process (Lantolf 2000). It is not only mediated partly through learners’ developing use and control of mental tools, more importantly, it is also dependent on face-to-face interaction (Mitchell and Myles 2004:195). In other words, from a sociocultural perspective, interactions cannot be simply seen as a source of input for autonomous and internal learning mechanisms. It is essentially social rather than individual in nature (Mitchell and Myles 2004). Interest in the learner as a social being leads to concern with a range of socially constructed elements in learners’ identities, including their gender identity. In this project, I was interested in seeing, on the one hand, whether and to what extent the socialisation of girls and boys into becoming Chinese girls and boys seems to affect their behaviour and attitudes towards English learning, and on the other hand, how students negotiate their gender identity in discourse via the use of English as a 1

Input hypothesis claims basically that the only necessary condition for language learning to take place is that the availability of input is comprehensible, whereas the output hypothesis declares that learners” language output in a real discourse context is a necessary requirement of second language (Mitchell and Myles 2004).

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foreign language in the school community. With a sociocultural approach to SLL, foreign/second language programmes started to aim to promote an understanding of other cultures or to bridge the gap between the student’s home culture and the second language culture2 (Robison 1985:1). Believing that both language and culture can be taught, Barro et al. (1991:57) advocate “the reintegration of culture and language in an educational approach that stress the intercultural dimension of communicative competence.” In other words, language teaching should include not only the language itself but also the awareness of cultural matters, including awareness of the way gender is acted out in different communities and societies. Especially in China, where the concept of “gender” is alien in a sense (see section 3.1), it means it is much more difficult for students to accept “gender” conceptually and to recognise the connotation of it. As a result, I wonder whether the second/foreign language learning and teaching in schools can be an occasion for the improvement of Chinese students’ gender awareness, and whether such an occasion for students’ gender negotiation can become formatively educational. Are students aware that there is an issue and how do they become aware of it? Are they aware of the possibility of gender performance being different in the target language community when they learn English at secondary school? If yes, in what specific ways have they become aware of the phenomenon and how do they think about it? Henslin (1999:76) states that “an important part of socialisation is the learning of culturally defined gender roles.” Liddicoat and Crozet (2001:137-138) also argue that “Learning to speak a foreign language is not a matter of simply adopting foreign norms of behaviour, but about finding an acceptable accommodation between one’s first culture and the target culture.”

One of the outcomes of the socialisation process is that people seem to 2

The term “culture” is really a complex concept, which often brings up more problems than it solves. In this research, I use the term in a generally accepted way, that is, to talk about large groups of people and what they have in common, from their history and worldview to their language or languages or geographical location (Scollon and Scollon 2001:138). Such a definition may downplay the possible differences among members. It is only for the purpose of the research, that the term of “culture” is used in this sense.

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have gender norms with which they are familiar and they have developed habitus 3 in their community. Then when they are learning an L2, particularly with CLT, they are confronted with unfamiliar ways of performing gender. In such circumstances, how would L2 learners react? Are they aware that they are confronted with various ways of performing gender? Would they accept such ways and modify their own behaviour in order to accommodate towards the images for which they were yearning themselves or would they reject these ways? All these questions were planned to be investigated in the research because of my interest in the value of SLE in educating young people as their knowledge grows along with their ability to become more flexible human beings without setting hard boundaries between languages and cultures generally and the way gender is enacted in different societies specifically.

2.3 Theories of identity There is a growing interest among L2 researchers in the constructed nature of identity. Some (e.g. Goldstein 1996; Martin-Jones and Heller 1996; Morgan 1996) have used the work of Bourdieu (1977), Bourdieu and Passeron (1977), and Bakhtin (1981) to frame innovative sociolinguistic and ethnographic research on language and identity. Some have found the feminist poststructuralist theory developed by Weedon (1997) productive for understanding language learners’ multiple and changing identities (e.g. Peirce 1995; McKay and Wong 1996; Siegal 1996)4. Theories of identity are far from unified. West (1992) believes that identity is related to the desire for recognition, the desire for affiliation and the desire for safety and security. It is people’s access to material resources that defines the terms on which they will articulate their desires. In this view, an individual’s identity will shift in accordance with changing social and economic relations. Bourdieu’s (1977) work complements West’s and focuses on the relationship between identity and symbolic power. Weedon (1997), unlike West and Bourdieu, has worked within a feminist poststructuralist tradition and has sought to integrate language, individual experience, and social power in a theory of 3

The habitus is a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways (Bourdieu 1991:12). 4 McKay and Wong (1996) have expanded on the construct of investment, drawing on a different group of learners than Peirce does (see Norton 1997:412).

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subjectivity5 that is considered to be produced in a variety of social sites, all of which are structured by relations of power in which the person employs different subject positions, such as that of a student, a child and a female or male. On the one hand, the individual in this theory is accorded greater human agency than in Bourdieu’s; on the other, the importance of language in constructing the relationship between the individual and the social is given more prominence in this theory than in West’s theory (Norton 1997:411). Norton (1997:440) views “identity” as a term to refer to how people understand their relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how people understand their possibilities for the future (Norton 1997:440)6. In drawing a distinction between coercive and collaborative relations of power, Cummins (1996) complements the work of West, Bourdieu, and Weedon. He agrees, on the one hand, that coercive relations of power refer to the exercise of power by a dominant individual, group, or country that is detrimental to others and serves to maintain an inequitable division of resources in a society. Collaborative relations of power, on the other hand, can serve to empower rather than marginalise. In other words, power is not a fixed, predetermined quantity but can be mutually constructed in interpersonal and intergroup relations (See Norton 1997:412 for a detailed review). There are indeed far more definitions of identity other than the above listed ones (e.g. Tajfel 1978). In this research, I hold the viewpoint that the concept of “identity” has at least two characteristics: (1) it is multi-faceted; (2) it must be examined in particular communities of practice. The first characteristic includes three aspects: firstly, an individual’s identity has various layers/levels. Our identity is composed not only of the way we think or talk about ourselves, but also the way others define us, as well as the way we enact our identity; secondly, individuals have multiple aspects of identity as reflected by multiple social roles (e.g. as a student, a female/male); thirdly, different dimensions of identity, such as gender, ethnicity, nationality and social class, are 5

Norton (1997:411) summarises three defining characteristics of subjectivity in Weedon’s (1997) theory of identity, namely, the multiple, non-unitary nature of the subject; subjectivity as a site of struggle; and subjectivity as changing over time. 6 Such a claim, on the one hand, follows West’s (1992) viewpoints that identity relates to desire; on the other hand, it is influenced by Weedon’s (1997) subjectivity theory as well.

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interconnected and simultaneously displayed in discourse.

2.3.1 The various layers of “identity” Identity does not equal “self-image”. It is “a negotiated experience between the ways we experience ourselves through participation, as well as the ways we and others reify ourselves” (Wenger 1998:138). This declaration corresponds with Duveen’s (2001) claim that “identity” has a dual nature, namely, it is not only about making identifications, but also about being identified by others. In this book, I would like to take Riley’s (2007) proposition of the three components of the concept of “identity” as a reference to explain my view on the multi-faceted nature (multiple layers) of individual’s identity. Our identity is largely constructed by others in their own image and likeness; they constantly tell us “who we are, who they wish we were and how we should behave” (Riley 2007:10). Riley in 2007 put forward three components of the concept of identity, that is, personal identity “Me”/“I”, social identity “Self”/“You” and communicative identity “Ethos”. According to him, the “me” is the individual’s personal perception of his or her social identity. It is the speaker’s identity (who I am and who I want to be taken for). On the one hand, we use “identity” to talk about what makes an individual that particular individual. What makes “me” me, as opposed to all other individuals. It is subjective and private (Riley 2007:213). On the other hand, we use “identity” to talk about what makes this individual like other individuals in terms of shared characteristics, memberships, the “you” that others address, construct and report. Membership of these groups forms a bundle of roles and discursive positions which the self may occupy, though with varying degrees of choice and awareness. In short, the “self” is the social identity, the sum of all the sub-groups of which the individual is a member. It is the perceived identity (who you think I am and who you take me for). Both the self-identity (“me”) and the identities others construct for us “self” make up our “real identity” (Joseph 2004:83). “Ethos” is the communicative self and is a compound of the “me” and “self”. It is the self-image projected by a speaker in and through his or her discourse (projected self), but also as it is filtered through the hearer’s perceptions, expectations and values, especially as constrained by social roles and genres (perceived self) (Riley 2007:213-214).

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Learning a foreign language is seen as an extension of self and personhood, an extension of the range of meanings of which the individual is capable (Riley 2007:219). In the research, taking gender as a discursively constructed concept, I want to see how participants’ multiple layers of gender identity are displayed through interaction, namely, the personally gendered self (how they perceive themselves as girls/boys); the socially gendered self (how they are perceived as girls/boys); and the communicatively gendered self (how they enact gender in interaction). Moreover, I also want to see if there are conflicts between these levels of gender identity, such as the way they want to behave as a girl/boy and the way they were told / instructed to behave as a girl/boy, how they would treat these conflicts.

2.3.2 The multiple aspects of identity as reflected in multiple social roles Individuals have various social roles with regard to others (e.g. parent, child, friend, teacher and student). As discussed by Riley (2007:99), “the enactment of a role is the dynamic expression of a situationally salient aspect of the individual’s social identity”. With the ongoing change from role to role in different contexts, our identity shifts accordingly. Most importantly, these social roles may be displayed simultaneously in discourse though in certain circumstances individuals may give or appear to give priority to one of the roles. Riley (2007:224) points out “Foregrounding a specific aspect of one’s social identity is a major aspect of the construction of ethos: by laying claims to membership of a particular social category, speakers aim to establish their competence (knowledge, experience) in the relevant domain, thereby confirming their credibility.”

In this research, I want to see how students’ multiple identities are signalled simultaneously in discourse and how they play these different social roles in interactions. Given the current research topic, I considered the student roles in learning English as a foreign language and the gender roles, and looked at how these roles played out in interactions among students in the course of learning English in the school community.

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2.3.3 Different dimensions of identity as interconnected in discourse Each utterance a speaker makes can be analysed as an “act of identity7” that can be interpreted multidimensionally as reflecting every complex sets of belonging (Joseph 2004). In other words, all utterances can be interpreted as an indication of the speaker’s identity (LePage and Tabouret-Keller 1985; Joseph 2004; Block 2007). This process of indexing is multidimensional, which means that emerging from all human utterances is the enactment of different dimensions of identity, such as ethnicity, nationality, gender and social class. In addition, this multidimensionality takes place simultaneously, namely, utterances index ethnicity, nationality, social class, gender and other dimensions of identity at the same time (Block 2007:40). Hence, in this research, students’ construction and negotiation of their gender identity would be examined and interpreted by integrating other aspects of their social identity, such as age.

2.3.4 Examining gender and SLL in communities of practice Gender does not have the same meanings across space and time. Instead, it is a local production and realised differently by different members of a community (Bucholtz 1999:210). As argued by Ehrlich (2001:112), “if the relationship between language and gender is not a direct one, but one mediated by the social activities and practices of particular speech communities, then investigations of gender and language use are most fruitfully carried out in relation to the “gendered” social practices of those communities.” According to Eckert and McConnel-Ginet (1992:464), a community of practice is “an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavour and their ways of practices emerge in the course of this mutual endeavour’. It is a ‘social construct which is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the practice in which that membership engages”. To understand precisely how language interacts with gender, we need to think practically and look locally in the social practices of particular communities (Eckert and McConnel-Ginet, 1992). 7 The concept of “act of identity” is put forward by LePage and Tabouret-Keller (1985) who hold the view that all utterances can be interpreted as an index of the speaker’s identity.

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Communities of practice (CsofP) are important places where negotiation of meaning, learning, development of practices, and formation of identities and social configurations take place. It presents a very useful framework for doing research on gender and SLL8 (Bucholtz 1999). It allows the researcher to “focus on the learning process”, “to examine ways in which gender mediates access to various practices”, and “to theorise the gender-based marginalisation of particular community members” (Pavlenko et al. 2001:24). In sociolinguistics, social theory is rooted in the concept of the speech community,9 which has allowed sociolinguists to demonstrate that many linguistic phenomena previously relegated to the realm of free variation are in fact socially structured. However, it presents special difficulties for researchers in the sociolinguistic subfield of language and gender since identity is viewed as a set of static categories. Firstly, traditional sociolinguistic research uses the speech community framework to account for linguistic phenomena, such as sound change, by using social information. When it comes to questioning how linguistic data can illuminate the social word, connections to social theory beyond linguistics become imperative. In addition, the speech community model was designed to analyse sociolinguistic phenomena at a macro level. Hence it is often inappropriate and inadequate for questions concerning identity such as how do speakers use language to manifest their identities as gendered social beings (Bucholtz 1999:204)? The need to explain processes of interaction and development among changeable and dynamic groups and situations has led a number of sociolinguists and L2 researchers to an alternative concept of greater flexibility, the “communities of practice”. For sociolinguistics, the CsofP represents an improvement on the speech community in that it addresses itself to both the social and the linguistic aspects of the discipline. In other words, it offers an integrated approach to linguistic and social analysis and enables researchers to provide more complete linguistic 8

“Communities of practice” is a concept proposed by Lave and Wenger in 1991 and developed by Eckert and McConnel-Ginet in 1992. It emerges from practice theory, and has currency in such disciplines as sociology, anthropology and education (Bucholtz 1999:204). 9 Gumperz’s definition of speech community: any human aggregate characterised by regular and frequent interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language use (Gumperz 1982:44).

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descriptions–along with social explanations–of particular social groups. (Bucholtz1999:220). Moreover, studying CsofP also allows us to investigate how gender interacts with other aspects of identity because “people’s access and exposure to, need for, and interest in different communities of practice are related to such things as their class, age, and ethnicity as well as to their sex” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992:472). In addition, it also allows for the study of interaction between levels of identity (see section 2.3). Such a richly contextualised approach to both language and society is one of the great strengths of the CsofP as a sociolinguistic framework (Bucholtz 1999:221). The relationship between language and gender is an indirect one, mediated by practices of a particular community (Ehrlich 2001). Schiffrin (1996) argues that social identity, which includes gender identity, is locally situated and constructed. When we examine the issue of language and gender construction, we should first probe into the types of social activity and practice associated with the construction of gender within a particular community. The CsofP construct is not only compatible with the sociolinguistic but also the sociocultural approach to language learning. Fundamental to a sociocultural approach is the assumption that “learning and development occur as people participate in the sociocultural activities of their community” (Rogoff 1994:209). In other words, L2 learners are viewed as essentially social beings taking part in structured social networks and practices. The notion of CsofP is promoted as a way to theorise and investigate social contexts10. When we examine students’ learning of an L2 under this framework, we do not see it so much as a gradual and neutral process of internalising the rules, structures, and vocabulary of a standard target language; rather, learners are seen to appropriate the utterance of others in particular historical and cultural practices situated in particular communities. In other words, researchers need to pay close attention to how communities and their practices are structured in order to examine how this structuring facilitates or constrains learners’ access to the linguistic resources of their communities (Norton and Toohey 2001:312). Such a theoretical framework oriented me towards examining adolescents’ construction and negotiation of their gender identity as L2 learners in a local secondary school by treating it as a particular 10

According to Lave and Wenger (1991), social contexts are regarded as complex and overlapping communities in which variously positioned participants learn specific, local, historically constructed and changing practices.

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constellation of interconnected communities of practice to be examined.11

11

Wenger (1998:127) once warned that treating school as a single of CsofP would gloss over the discontinuities that are integral to their very structure.

CHAPTER THREE CHINA AS A RESEARCH CONTEXT

The research site of this project is in China and the reasons for me to choose it lie in the following unique research contexts it provides. In a review of the role of gender in first and second language learning and use, Ehrlich (1997:427) advises against asking “overtly general research questions about women and men, girls and boys that ignore the social, cultural, and situational contexts in which second languages are acquired.” In this chapter, I will provide information on the Chinese sociocultural background (in section 3.1) and the wide adoption of CLT in the Chinese EFL classroom in secondary schools (in section 3.2). Based on the review of the research and theories in previous chapters and the realisation of the Chinese research context, the research questions of the study were finally formulated, and this is discussed at the end of the chapter in section 3.3.

3.1 Gender—an under-researched issue in China Underlying the beliefs of many cultures is an assumption that, beyond biology, women and men possess essentially different capacities and functions (Reese 2003). As argued by Best et al. (2000), gender roles in society are acquired via the process of socialisation rather than biologically determined. It is through the gendered socialisation process that individuals develop their sense of self and identity as female or male. In ancient Chinese culture, dating back to 2,000 years ago, women were required to abide by the moral standard known as the Three Obediences and Four Virtues,1 which officially encoded the unequal status women 1

Three Obediences refers to “obedience to her father before marriage”, “to her husband during her married life” and “to her son in widowhood” (in Chinese “᳾ ႕Ң⠊”ˈ”ߎ႕Ң໿”˗”໿⅏Ңᄤ”); Four Virtues refers to “the feudal virtues of fidelity”, “physical charm and propriety in speech”, and “efficiency in needlework” (in Chinese “ཛᖋ”˗”ཛ㿔”˗”ཛᆍ”˗”ཛࡳ”).

China as a Research Context

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and men held in the social order and affected females’ behaviour when they engaged in talking or working with males (Guo 2000). This lowly position of women in front of men is also embodied in husbands’ appellation of their wives, for example, “zhuojin” (᢭㤚), “jiannei” (䌅 ‫)ݙ‬, which corresponds to the meaning of “my gauche or humble wife” in English. Even in modern China, in some undeveloped rural areas, husbands still call their wife “shaohuode” (⚻☿ⱘ) or “zuofande”(‫خ‬佁 ⱘ), which define wives’ roles in the family as “the women in the kitchen”. Moreover, the word order of the Chinese characters can also reflect the unequal relationship between females and males in China. For example, in Chinese, we are accustomed to say “father and mother” (⠊ ↡), “husband and wife” (໿ྏ), “brother and sister” (‫)ྍܘ‬, “male and female” (⬋ཇ), “grandfather and grandmother” (⠋⠋ཊཊ). If we reverse these word orders, it is regarded as odd and not acceptable by the standards of Chinese social and linguistic norms. The situation has improved since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 when legal equality regardless of gender was proclaimed. Under the Constitution of 1982, women have the right to vote and possess equal rights in the political, economic, cultural and social sectors of society. Later, since the government’s “reform and opening up” policy and under the impact of globalisation, the mass media and cultural diversity, the construction of gender in China has differed from the traditional ones, and attitudes towards women have been liberalised. However, though women’s social status has greatly improved in China over recent years, as a whole, they still occupy secondary positions in society. For instance, over 80 per cent of all government positions are open only to men. Women are still discriminated against in the labour market when it comes to employment (Louie 2002). Moreover, in the school context, on the one hand, discrimination against female students, whether intentionally or not, is still widespread in China’s mixed elementary and secondary schools (Yan 2001). Academically, boys are paid more attention by teachers during class instruction in elementary and secondary schools. They are also more likely to speak up and be commended by their teachers than girls (Guo 2000). On the other hand, girls and boys are intentionally kept separate in schools. Although all of the above indicates that gender is an issue in China, few studies on this topic, particularly in the school context, have been conducted, let alone published. Such a sociocultural background makes research on gender and education particularly urgent and meaningful in China.

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In addition, in the Chinese language itself, there is no specific word for “gender” but only for “sex”. When we check the English-Chinese dictionary, the word “gender” translated into Chinese merely refers to either the subclass within a grammatical class of a language or the biological term “sex”. It is not only an issue of lexical choice but also an ideological and cultural issue. It means that on the one hand, there is an inbuilt tendency for girls and boys to be brought up with an essentialist view of gender identity. Even people who want to talk about gender issues do not have a term to refer to “gender”. Issues such as the assumptions which are made about the relationship between women and men, the prepositional knowledge individuals have about females and males are not questioned. On the other hand, it makes the “gender” topic a really sensitive, even unmentionable, area for discussion in public. In particular, if one wants to talk with children of school age about gender issues, they have the tendency to assume that you are really more inclined to talk with them about issues to do with sex. As a result, individuals’ awareness of gender identity may be inhibited. This lack of “gender” in the Chinese language influences the whole research process, including the process of collecting, analysing and interpreting data (see methodology, findings and discussion chapters for more in-depth clarification). From the late 20th century, having been influenced by the development of research on gender internationally, researchers in sociology started to investigate gender issue in China as well, with the main aim of improving women’s status in society by taking a feministic theoretical perspective. In such circumstances, the compound term “social sex” (in Chinese “⼒Ӯᗻ߿”) started to be used, and this was later translated into English as “gender”. At present, the development of research on gender in China is till at an early stage compared to the research in some other countries, and much is related to issue of feminism. It seems that people have pretended that it is acceptable to not talk about it and the strategy of not talking about it seems to be the safest way to reproduce the system. The term “social sex” is not widely known among ordinary people. In daily life, including in the school context, the notion of the social construction of gender is never talked about, just “girls” and “boys”. In short, this sociocultural and linguistic context in China made students difficult to access to the notion of “gender”. Furthermore, in contemporary China, globalisation and modernisation have combined to give rise to many situations in which people start to meet or live with new people from all around the world. For instance, on

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the one hand, it has been more than 100 years since China began to send its students and scholars to study abroad. According to the official statistics, the number of Chinese students studying abroad is the largest among all the countries of the world. From the reform and opening up in 1978 until 2003, a total of 700,200 Chinese students and scholars have studied in 108 countries and regions all over the world2, covering almost all disciplines. Both the quantity and scale has been unprecedented in the history of China and the work related to students and scholars’ studying abroad now serves as a window for cultural exchanges between China and other countries (“Work related to students and scholars studying abroad”, online article from the official site of Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China ). On the other hand, since the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, overseas students from more than 170 countries have been received. Especially in recent years, with the rapid development of China’s higher education and high-quality universities, the country has gradually become a popular destination for foreign students and statistically the number of foreign students studying in China has risen more than 20 per cent annually over the past five years. In 2006, about 10,000 foreign students came to study in China on scholarships provided by the Chinese government (“Number of foreign students in China rises 20 per cent annually”, online article from the website of China Education and Research Network). In such a context, the search for identity and membership becomes a constant preoccupation of all members in Chinese society, not only for those Chinese who study abroad, but also for those who live in China but have plenty of opportunities to communicate with foreign people. As Riley states (2007:297), “Competence in ‘language of membership’ is often more important to being recognised as a member than specific details of, say, pronunciation and syntax.” For example, there must be Chinese students who come to foreign countries and find that the image they projected of themselves is misunderstood by foreigners there, and vice versa. Hence, my investigation of Chinese students’ gender construction and its negotiation in the EFL classroom can be seen as a genuine attempt to investigate this constant negotiation and renegotiation of memberships and identities of modern Chinese society from an 2

As for the geographic distribution of the overseas Chinese students and scholars, the statistics for destinations in 2003 shows that 49.8 per cent of students go to Europe and 15.4 per cent of them go to North America and Latin America, of which most are English-speaking countries.

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educational and social point of view.

3.2 Communicative language teaching in the EFL class in Chinese secondary schools China has become the largest market for English teaching in the world. In the past decades, China’s modernisation programme has called for thousands of people with a working command of English, and EFL teaching has been carried out there for more than one century (Adamson 2004). According to the National Secondary School Curriculum, English is one of the three most important subjects (i.e. English, Chinese and mathematics) that students have to learn throughout their entire school life. In fact, due to the future requirements of either furthering one’s study (e.g. to successfully obtain a Bachelor’s degree in the university or to apply for a Master’s or PhD degree) or succeeding in the job market, English, in a sense, is treated as more important than the other two subjects for one’s entire academic life.3 The EFL teaching in China used to be dominated by the Grammar-Translation approach, in which lessons consist of explicit teaching of grammatical rules, a study of lists of vocabulary and some translation exercises (Richards, et al. 1998). Later on, realising that such a teaching approach, characterised by a teacher-oriented, test-oriented style at all stages of language learning, fails to enable students to communicate effectively when involved in real-life encounters in the target language, the CLT approach was introduced into the English classroom at both the secondary school level and tertiary level in the early 1980s (Zheng and Davison 2008). The new National Curriculum of English Teaching (NNCET) specifies that the aim of EFL teaching is “improving students’ language skills and fostering their ability to communicate in English” (Zhang 2001). In most schools, from the very beginning of their English studies, students are encouraged to work collaboratively and develop communicative competence through all kinds of communicative activities. A series of new textbooks have also 3

In China, if students want to successfully obtain their Bachelor Degree after four years” study in universities or colleges, they have to pass the National English Band-4 Examination. Moreover, English is one of the compulsory subjects in the post-graduate entrance examination, no matter which subject you wish to study further. In addition, competence in English is definitely an advantage in applying for jobs.

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been published to accompany the introduction of CLT (Zhang 2001). With the aim of developing students’ communicative competence, which enables learners to speak in contextually appropriate ways, it is not surprising to find that the CLT approach makes use of all kinds of communicative tasks, authentic materials and role-play to contribute in one way or another to the contextualisation of the use of the target language (Riley 2007:94). In such a teaching and learning environment, the EFL classroom in China not only becomes a fertile terrain in which to investigate the relationship between gender and second language learning, but also offers a valuable space where new generations can think about the notion of gender and what they can do with it and how to use it as an educational tool for change. The attempt to introduce CLT into EFL teaching in China has provoked a great amount of comment and debate (Rao 2002). Whereas the majority of accounts focus on the need to adapt CLT to the demands and conditions for language learning and teaching in China, the practical operations of the approach in the classroom, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of adopting the approach (e.g. Li 1984; Spenser 1986; Harvey 1985; Ting 1987), there was a lack of research on the possible educational and social benefits that the EFL classroom, especially with a CLT approach could bring to students, teachers and society. This research is an attempt to investigate its potential educational and social values by examining students’ construction and negotiation of their gender identity in the process of learning English as a foreign language in a secondary school context.

3.3 Development of research questions Second language learning and teaching may open up opportunities for individuals to reflect on gender issues. My own background is that of being Chinese, a female, someone who knows the Chinese educational system well and has experienced the life of a foreign student in the UK for more than five years, thus I considered that the educational system in China would be a particularly suitable site for the study of gender issues in relation to second language education. The study focuses on the way female and male students negotiate their gender identity as EFL learners in a local secondary school context. It is not interested in the differences between boys and girls per se, but in the way they negotiate gender identities in interactional discourse via the use of English as a foreign

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language. This research topic is based on my own research interest, the understanding of relevant literature, the identification of the research gap in the field, as well as the realisation of the sociocultrual background and the status quo of EFL teaching in schools in China. The main research question was finally identified as: “How do Chinese students construct and negotiate gender in the course of learning English as a foreign language in secondary school?” To better answer this main research question, the following subsidiary questions were further investigated: (1) 1.1)

1.2)

(2) 2.1) 2.2) (3)

Do students refer to ideal gender characterisations in their discourse? If yes, to which ideal female and male images do they refer? How do they respond to these images discursively and practically? What gender representations in native-English-speaking countries do they refer to in discourse? Do they show evidence that these images make them question the way in which they have so far been used to think? How do students deal with their social roles as students learning English and their gendered role in context? How do they enact gender in communicative tasks? How do they rationalise their interactional behaviour in tasks in their discourse? What is the potential value of EFL learning and teaching in China in relation to students’ gender awareness and performance?

CHAPTER FOUR METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES

This chapter deals with the methodological issues of the research. Section 4.1 deals with the case study strategy adopted in the research, including the introduction of research settings and the selection and description of research participants. Section 4.2 explains methods used to elicit and collect data. The three main data collection tools, observations, interviews and focus groups, are discussed in the section. Issues of data management and analysis are presented in section 4.3. This involves the description of the three main datasets, the analytical tools and procedures of the dataset, as well as the way data will be interpreted and presented in the following finding and discussion chapters of the book. Reflective discussion on the methodology of the research is also provided in section 4.4. This include the decision to use Chinese instead of English in interviews and focus group discussions, difficulties met in data collection and analysis and the ways in which they were solved, the effect of the presence of the researcher in the study and ethical issues involved in the research, as well as issues concerning research validity and reliability.

4.1 The ethnographic case study strategy Case study is the most commonly adopted strategy used with an interpretivist paradigmatic stance in social research (Cohen, et al. 2003). It seeks to “engage with and report the complexity of social activity in order to represent the meanings that individual social actors bring to those settings and manufacture in them” (Stark and Torrance 2005:33). In other words, case study allows the researcher to concentrate on a particular issue in great depth without losing contextual information. Denscombe (2003:39) points out that the focus on one or a few instances in a case study allows the researcher to “deal with the subtleties and intricacies of complex social situations” and “enables them to grapple with relationships and social processes in a way that is denied to the

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survey approach”. In this project, case study strategy was adopted for three main reasons: firstly, the aim of the research was to grapple with the deep-seated relationship between students’ gender construction in the process of socialisation and their experience of learning a new language. It needs the researcher to delve into phenomena in detail, which justifies the chosen research strategy since case study offers opportunities to discover things that might not be apparent through only superficial research. Secondly, the constructionist epistemological stance in this research emphasised the uniqueness and complexities of individual students’ gender identity. The review of literature and previous studies in Chapter 1 and 2 also provided evidence that it is impossible to discuss gender identity outside a specific context. Hence, a case study approach which was used to investigate social processes within a particular social context rather than to explore situations that are representative (Burgess and Pole 2000:49) was chosen. Thirdly, informed by the sociocultural approach which strives to encompass the totality of the relationships that learners entertain with all aspects of their environment (Kramsch 2002), female and male students’ performance of gender will be investigated and analysed holistically rather than on the basis of isolated factors. This embodies another characteristic and advantage of the case study strategy. Research in the field of gender and SLE constantly places high value on the strengths of case study and large amounts of empirical data are collected using this strategy. For instance, Blackledge (2001) conducted a case study in a school in Birmingham, UK, with mothers and teachers of young Bangladeshi children to see how the mothers negotiated their identity with the teachers in a minority urban setting. McMahill (2001) investigated the issue of how L2 learners manifest themselves in reality and in the imagination of a feminist English class community by carrying out a case study of a Japanese feminist English class, “Colours of English”. All these successful trials, as well as the satisfying experience of conducting a case study in my own MPhil project inspired my confidence in also using case study in this research. The case study strategy adopted in the project shares some characteristics with ethnography. Walford (1999:vii) advocates adopting ethnography in the educational research field, “Ethnography has become one of the major methods of researching educational settings. Its key strength is its emphasis on understanding the perceptions and cultures of the people and organisation studied.” In other words, the intention of employing this approach is to create as vivid a re-construction as possible

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of the culture or groups being studied in a naturalistic environment so as to allow us to seek descriptions and interpretations of phenomena in the contexts being studied (LeCompte and Preissle 1993:55). In reaction to the criticism by positivist, that qualitative research is lacking scientific rigour, ethnographers developed an alternative view of the proper nature of social research, often termed “naturalism” (Blumer 1969; Lofland and Lofland 1971). This suggests that research must be carried out in ways that are sensitive to the nature of the setting. The primary aim should be to describe what happens in the setting, how the people involved see their own actions and those of others, and the contexts in which the action take place (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007). In this case study, in order to portray a vivid and authentic picture of girls’ and boys’ gender awareness and performance in the context of second language learning, I not only observed participants’ gender performance in interaction for nearly 8 months, but also explored their accounts of their own actions and those of their peers in discourse. Realising that people’s gendered behaviour can only be understood in context (Morse 1994), I kept a close eye on the contexts of the communities in which students resided and tried my best to maintain the natural setting of the research context throughout the whole process. This was evident from the designing of the tasks to the careful arrangement of interviews and focus group discussions which will be clarified in detail in the following data collection section. Ethnography involves the ethnographer participating, overtly or covertly, in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007). As argued by Agar (1980), in ethnographic research, there is always an emphasis on direct personal involvement with the people in the study. Long-term residence can help the ethnographer to learn about the basic beliefs, fears, hopes and expectations of the people under study and provides an opportunity to observe people as they go about the tasks of daily living (Morse 1994:163). The fieldwork for this case study started in September 2007 and lasted for about 8 months excluding the winter vacation. During these 8 months, I lived in a single room in the school dormitory for teachers and worked in the office where all the English teachers of Grade Two worked.1 In the daytime, when 1 This leads to the issue concerning the distance between the researcher and the student participants, as well as the teacher participants, which will be discussed later in this part of the book.

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students were having their lessons, I would either go to observe their behaviour in class or work in the teachers’ office (e.g. doing some preparation work for the research, chatting with the teachers in order to learn more information about the teaching and learning environment in the school, gender-related issues as well as background information about the student participants). When it came to students’ rest time, I would go and chat with them in a relaxed atmosphere. With the University Entrance Examination (UEE) awaiting them, students were under pressure in their daily study. They were really busy for most of the day and the only time that I could chat with them was at meal times as well as the break time before the afternoon (11:25am—13:30pm) and evening (17:00—18:00pm) classes began. Normally, from Monday to Friday, students had four classes in the morning and three in the afternoon, each lasting for 45 minutes. On Saturday, they still had four classes to be taken in the morning and would be free from Saturday morning till Sunday evening when they were required to be back at school to prepare for the next week’s classes. There were another 45 minutes set aside for them to do physical exercise every day during the break between dinner and the beginning of evening self-study classes. Sometimes, I would chat with them if they did not go sport in that period of time. The self-study time in the evening was divided into two sections and each lasted for 80 minutes. During each section, students would have a subject teacher sit at the front on the platform. If they met with any problems concerning this subject, they could go and seek help from the teacher. Sometimes, if it was the English teachers’ turn to be the evening supervisor, I would go to the class and observe students’ behaviour to see whether there were any supportive data and whether they needed any help in EFL learning. The school has two refectories, one for the teachers and one for the students. Sometimes I would have meals with the teachers and sometimes with the students. Moreover, I also took part in both the teachers’ and students’ social gatherings and their extra-curricular activities. To make my presence in the field as unobtrusive as possible, I spent a lot of time in getting to know both the teachers and students and then joined in their social gatherings. When we became more familiar with each other, they voluntarily invited me to their gatherings, frequently with great enthusiasm. Such a long-term residence allowed me to get to know both student and teacher participants well, as well as the school culture in relation to EFL learning and teaching. After I finished the main data collection work, I maintained contact with them

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via e-mail and MSN to obtain further information, such as their study progress, and their developing thinking about English learning and teaching, and gender issues.

4.1.1 Research settings The aim of the research was to arrive at a better understanding of how EFL learners negotiated gender via the use of English in local school communities and to examine the potential value of SLE in China, especially the learning of EFL, in relation to students’ gender awareness and performance. A group of Chinese girls and boys in a secondary school context was hence chosen as the case to be studied in the project. The school where I finally decided to carry out fieldwork was an ordinary state boarding secondary school (Senior High Middle School) in a county-level city located in the south-east part of China. The principal criterion I used to select the school as my research site was whether the CLT approach was widely used in the EFL classroom. If this was the case, students there would be familiar with performing communicative tasks. Once they were assigned to carry out communicative tasks in the research, they would do them as ordinary English classroom exercises. I hope this might make the data that I planned to collect more valid by decreasing reactivity. Moreover, in a CLT-dominated EFL classroom, there would be more student-student interactions and student-teacher interactions than in an examination-oriented class. As a result, it would offer greater opportunities to observe both students and teachers’ behaviour in interactions which were one of the core phenomena to be investigated in the project. In this school, members of the school community including school leaders and EFL teachers, as well as students, paid great attention to English learning. For example, the school hires an American native-English-speaking teacher to give oral English lessons to students in Grades One and Two. Each year the school sends several EFL teachers to further their study in Britain in the form of either short-term exchanges or long-term master’s degree study. These teachers’ experience of studying abroad broadened their horizons and enriched their teaching. It brings fresh air into the EFL teaching and learning in the school as later became apparent from interviews with both teachers and students (see sections 6.2.2 and 9.2.2). Furthermore, there were

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various types of English extra-curricular activities organised by the school, teachers and the students themselves, such as the annual English Week Activity2, and Weekly English Corner. They aim to enrich the school culture, build a good English learning atmosphere, inspire students’ interest in learning English and promote communication between students. Such an atmosphere provided me with rich opportunities to observe students’ interactional behaviour in discourse in English. Another reason for selecting this school was related to access to the school. Because I graduated from it and had once worked there as a trainee teacher for a while during my undergraduate course, it was much easier for me to gain access to this school. In addition, the advantages of the researcher undergoing a similar socialisation process to that of the student participants in the research were also taken into account in selecting the school (see section 4.4.1 for detailed discussion of this). As suggested by Deborah (2003), in order to reach meaningful conclusions in a research study, the historical and social context of the case must be understood. Since the current study treated gender as a dynamic concept that varies in different social and cultural context, it was necessary to have a brief look at the contextual information about the city in which the school was located. The city was located in the south-east part of China whose economy is the most developed in the country. It was a small city by Chinese standards with a population of around 1,160,000 people. On the one hand, the history of the city dated back to 4,000 years ago and people there were deeply imbued with the traditional Chinese culture. On the other hand, though it was a small city, the economy there was highly developed and the city was famous across China because of this. Many families were wealthy and sent their children abroad to further their study. English learning was hence widely valued among both parents and students in the city. In other words, students’ awareness of the importance of learning English was generally high in the city. However, the economy of the city was mainly based on small-scale private businesses rather than large state enterprises. Not only was the economy less developed, but people’s minds were also less open than that in those big international cities like Shanghai and Beijing. Opportunities for people there to have contact with foreigners or foreign cultures face-to-face were still rare. In short, compared to those 2 The annual English Week Activity includes activities like English Speech Competition, English Song Competition, English Drama Competition, English Handwriting Competition and appreciation of original classic English films.

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underdeveloped areas in China, the city was well developed, but compared to big international cities, the city was rather small. The social and economic character of the city unavoidably impacted to a certain extent on the citizens’ viewpoints and behaviour, which was always borne in mind in the process of analysing, interpreting and presenting data in the book.

4.1.2 Sampling of student participants in pairs 4.1.2.1 Selection of the grade and the class The main student participants in the research were all from Grade 2 of the school (around the age 16 to 17). The reasons for me to choose students in Grade 2 were: firstly, according to daily observation, the EFL class in Grade 3 was overtly dominated by the traditional grammar-translation pedagogy and there were few opportunities for students to carry out communicative tasks in class. Moreover, students in Grade 3 were very busy preparing for the UEE and did not have time to take part in a research study which would last for several months. Secondly, students in Grade 1 were not as familiar with the CLT model as those in Grade 2 because they had only just entered the school and some of them had experienced traditional grammar-translation teaching method previously. Furthermore, according to their examination record and interviews with teachers and school leaders, the general English language proficiency of students in Grade 1 this year was a little low and it was difficult for them to communicate in English freely with each other. Thirdly, students in Grade 2 were divided into either science-oriented or arts-oriented classes (subsequently, I will refer to them briefly as science/arts classes). In Senior High Middle Schools in China, students in Grade 1 have to learn all the subjects including English, Chinese, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, and history. At the end of their first year, the class type will be divided into two kinds, one is called the science class (“⧚⾥⧁”in Chinese) and the other is the arts class (“᭛⾥⧁” in Chinese). In science classes, the main subjects are: English, Chinese, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. In contrast, the main subjects in the arts classes are English, Chinese, mathematics, history, politics, and geography. Students in both types of class have to study the other subjects as well, but after they pass the General Examination in

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those subjects (in Chinese “Ӯ㗗”) in secondary school, they do not need to study them anymore. Those main subjects were the only subjects to be assessed in the UEE (in Chinese “催㗗”) by the end of Grade 3. The ratio of female to male students in these two kinds of classes was disproportionate. In science classes, there were far more boys than girls, while the majority of students in arts classes were girls (e.g. in the arts class in which I did the research, among the 53 students, 11 were boys. In the science class, out of the 54 students, 16 were female). This was itself a gender-related issue which contributed to my decision to select students in Grade 2 as the main student participants. In other words, the selection of these classes would allow me to see how gender-related issues would be related to the choice of different types of class3. Two classes were finally selected out of the 18 administrative classes in Grade 2 of the school.4 One was from the 14 science classes and the other was from the 4 arts classes, which I will call “Class A” and “Class B” respectively. Both of the two EFL teachers in Class A and Class B were female. The ratio of female EFL teachers to male EFL teachers was also unbalanced. In Grade 2, of all the 9 EFL teachers, only 1 was male and he showed unwillingness to take part in the research but agreed to take part in an interview and to allow me to observe two of his classes. Since the research did not aim to investigate the differences between female and male teachers’ influence onto the students’ construction of gendered roles and behaviours, it does not affect the findings of the research. The main reason for me to choose these two classes was based on the teaching style of the EFL teacher in the class. According to daily observation, teachers in these two classes provided more opportunities for students to communicate with each other, either in pairs or in groups of four, in carrying out interactive tasks. Furthermore, they not only taught grammar points but also introduced some aspects of English culture into class. The classroom atmosphere was interactive and vibrant. 3

In the book, whenever I refer to “students” choice of class (types)”, it means their choice of science or arts classes. 4 “Administrative class” (in Chinese “㸠ᬓ⧁”) means a fixed group of students studying in a fixed classroom all the time and with a headteacher in charge of the class. It is different from the concept of class reflected in the term “EFL class” which is named according to the subject. Students in an administrative class take EFL class, mathematics class, Chinese class, physics class together in the same classroom.

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Teachers sometimes used PowerPoint to deliver lessons by adding pictures and video clips to enrich the teaching content. Another reason for the selection of the two classes lay in the number of girls and boys in the class, as well as the seating arrangement. If girls and boys were separated from each other and never performed tasks together, it would be impossible to observe their interactional behaviour in a natural setting. For a similar reason, I worked with students selected independently in both classes instead of grouping them for a special activity. The following Figure 4-1 illustrates the case and sampling of the project.

Figure 4-1 The case and sampling Note: Class A is a science class and Class B is an arts class

4.1.2.2 Selecting pairs of students Student participants in the two classes were selected in pairs. The concept of interaction is crucial to the notions of gender construction and gender negotiation (see section 1.1). According to daily observation, students in both classes were familiar with conducting interactive tasks. Some tasks were required to be completed with deskmates, while others were done in groups of four composed of students in the vicinity. To ensure the maximum amount of time that both interlocutors spent engaging in performing tasks (Richards and Rodgers 2001), the targeted students’ interactional behaviour was mainly observed when they were communicating with peers in pairs. Pairwork is the most typical format

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for collaborative learning5 which is regarded as a well-established model of CLT (Macaro 1997). It is an effective way to minimise the influence of external factors. If there are more than two students involved in a conversation, say four, for example, and three of them are female, then the only male student may be more inclined to keep silent, and vice versa. In addition, by observing girls’ and boys’ communicative behaviour in pairs, we can see what kind of gender identity is projected onto them by the other one in the pair and how they respond to such a projected identity. One of the most persistent methodological problems in conducting research on gender issues is the difficulty of separating gender from all the other factors which might exert influence on the issue concerned (Crawford 1995). In view of that, several criteria were used when selecting student participants in pairs. Firstly, due to the fact that the research topic concerned gender issues, both male-male pairs, female-female pairs and male-female pairs were all selected. Secondly, to engineer a naturalistic observation of students’ behaviour in interaction, without disturbing, in a sense, the normal operation, only those pairs of students who were either deskmates or those sitting next to each other who were familiar with each other and had experience of working together before in the daily EFL class were targeted. As argued by Ondarra (1997), speakers vary their use of language according to the degree of familiarity with their interlocutors. In the school, although teachers, especially EFL teachers, provided opportunities for girls and boys to work with each other, they seldom paired them as deskmates, unless the number of girls and boys in class was not even.6 This was the situation in Classes A and B. Most students sat with students of the same sex and only some of the pairs were 5

The collaborative learning model is defined by Macaro (1997:134) as follows: “Collaborative learning is when learners are encouraged to achieve common learning goals by working together rather than with the teacher and when they demonstrate that they value and respect each other’s language input.” 6 Usually, classroom seating is arranged by the headteacher of the class, who not only teaches an academic subject to the class but is also in charge of all of the class affaire, including holding parents” meetings and organising extra-curricular activities. He/she is acquainted with students” all-around academic performances and pays attention to the fluctuation of their academic performance as well as their mental health, and is the one who knows the students best. There were altogether 50 classes in the school. According to my field observation, none of the headteachers voluntarily made girls sit with boys as deskmates.

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female-male deskmates. However, some girl-girl pairs and boy-boy pairs in class were allocated alternate seats. When they were doing tasks in groups of four, some girls would work together with boys. In addition, due to the regular change of the seating in an entire row, girls and boys sitting in adjacent rows sometimes sat as deskmates.7 In other words, girls and boys sitting in the neighbourhood were familiar with each. By using this convenient physical proximity, they had opportunities to communicate not only when doing tasks, but also during break times between lessons. Moreover, in their spoken language class taught by the native-English-speaking teacher, students were used to doing communicative tasks in female-male pairs since the teacher required them to sit in such a manner. In short, pair-grouping of the main student participants was not manipulated and I used the usual seating arrangement in the class for the formation of pairs in the research. Thirdly, students’ English proficiency was taken into account. Those who were poor at English were not selected since they might have been unable to communicate with each other effectively in English. Fourthly, in order to obtain rich data, the pairs who showed their reluctance to talk and kept silent in the English class were also not chosen as main participants. Fifthly, in order to get a more comprehensive point of view, students’ personalities were also considered in selecting participants. The research focused on social interactions between students, hence both students who exhibited and those who did not exhibit social interactional skills in the context of classroom were all chosen to be involved in the research. This was on the basis of my observation and was supported by data from teachers’ and students’ interviews. In short, students who were extrovert and talkative, as well as those who were introvert and shy, were both included in the research. Altogether 27 pairs of students were selected from these two classes, among which 15 pairs were from Class A (4 female-female pairs, 6 male-male pairs, 5 female-male pairs) and the other 12 pairs (6 female-female pairs, 3 male-male pairs, 3 female-male pairs) were from Class B. The number of pairs used in the final data analysis was 19 (7 female-female pairs, 6 male-male pairs, 6 female-male pairs). The quality of some recordings made it difficult to distinguish the interlocutors and they were excluded from the final database. Those pairs who spoke too much Chinese in the tasks due to low oral English ability 7

See Appendix A for a picture of daily classroom seating arrangements in the two selected classes.

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were also excluded because it was difficult to see their interactional behaviour in English. Furthermore, only data collected from those pairs who took part in all the research activities, including communicative tasks, interviews, as well as focus group discussions, were entered into the final main database. Data collected from those pairs who missed one or two research sessions were treated as supplementary datasets (see Table 4-1 for sample size of student participants in the research). Table 4-1 Sample size of student participants Selected class Class A (54 students) Class B (53 students)

Number of main student participants 15 pairs (4 f-f; 6 m-m; 5 f-m)

Number of recordings being transcribed that were entered into final main datasets 10 pairs (3 f-f; 4 m-m; 3 f-m)

12 pairs (6 f-f; 3 m-m; 3 f-m)

9 pairs (4 f-f; 2 m-m; 3 f-m)

Apart from these targeted student and teacher participants in Classes A and B, other teachers (both EFL and non-EFL teachers) and students were also involved in the research to a certain degree since they lived together in the same school community. Their knowledge and viewpoints about the targeted students and teachers, as well as the social, cultural and teaching context of the school community, were also invaluable for the entire data analysis in the project.

4.2 Data elicitation and collection Case study encourages the researcher to use multiple methods and data sources to explore the research topic (Denscombe 2003). Intensive study of the case is done through multiple data sources (Deborah 2003). In this case study, to answer the research questions, different types of observation and interview, as well as focus group discussions, were conducted to collect the data.

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4.2.1 Observations Becoming participant-observers in a community enables researchers to observe from a holistic perspective the communicative practices of that community as they occur naturally (Wenger 1998). In the research, several types of observation were conducted to collect different sorts of data, including preliminary observation of the school community and EFL classes in general; long-term EFL class observation of the selected two classes; non-EFL classroom observation of both of the two selected classes, as well as other classes; observation of students’ extra-curricular activities and other daily activities inside and outside the class; as well as the principle observation of students’ interactional behaviour in performing communicative tasks (see Table 4-2 for an overview of the observations). Table 4-2 Types of observation conducted in the research Types of observation (*principal observation of the research) *Observation of students’ interactions in doing tasks as the main observation in the research Warm-up observation of the EFL class and ongoing observations of students’ and teachers’ daily school life

Participants (with the female researcher as participant-observer)

Students in pairs

Students and EFL teachers (including students and teachers in all the grades)

Main purpose of the observation

To explore: (1) students’ performance of gender in interaction; (2)students’ actual behavioural reactions to images they constructed of English girls and boys To explore general information about EFL teaching and gender-related issues in the school; To help selection of Classes A and B from the three grades

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Long-term EFL class observation of Classes A and B

Students and EFL teachers in Classes A and B

Non-EFL class observation of mainly Classes A and B (including mathematics, Chinese, physics and chemistry classes) Observation of students’ extra-curricular activities (e.g. English Week Activity)

Students and non-EFL teachers in the classes

Students involved in the activities

To explore both academic and non-academic information about the selected student participants, as well as information about class organisation and EFL teaching practice in the classes; To help the sampling of the student participants in the classes and the design of the tasks being used in the research To explore the specific nature of the EFL class

To explore (1) more information about girls’ and boys’ behaviour and performance in English; (2)information about the school policy and atmosphere, especially that related to EFL learning

4.2.1.1 Observations used to collect supplementary data Morse (1994) argues that participant observation can set the stage for other techniques, such as interviews, life histories and other data collection procedures. In the research, the following completed observations provided not only useful contextual data for the study but also helped to modify and enrich the questions to be investigated further in interviews and focus-group discussions. In the research, “context” refers to both individual circumstances (e.g. individual’s personality, their academic performance) and the sociocultural context of the educational institution and mainstream Chinese society.

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4.2.1.1.1 Warm-up observations of the EFL class and students’ and teachers’ daily life at school This preliminary observation of the school community and the EFL class was designed to obtain general information about EFL teaching and learning, and gender-related issues by observing students’ and teachers’ behaviour across Grades 1, 2 and 3. Fieldnotes were taken to record the following useful information: (1) knowledge about EFL teaching and learning in the school, such as the teaching pedagogy adopted in class, teaching material used in school and extra-curricular activities organised in school; (2) contextual information about gender-related issues, such as the seating arrangement in class, ratio of girls to boys in the class, and obvious behavioural differences between girls and boys inside and outside the class. Such kinds of observation helped me to accommodate myself to the research site and negotiate my participation in the school. It also oriented my final choice of Classes A and B from the three grades. 4.2.1.1.2 Long-term EFL class observation of Class A and Class B After the preliminary classroom observations, Class A and Class B were finally selected. Long-term EFL class observations of these two classes were then conducted to gain more information about the students, teachers, and English learning and teaching in the class, including interactional behaviour between girls and boys in class, the way EFL teachers organised the class, and the form of communicative tasks adopted in the class. Both of these classes had five English classes per week8. When it came to teaching new lessons, I would go and observe the class. With respect to special sessions for grammar practice or examination paper checking, I would attend the class selectively because the former class type was more interactive than the latter. These classroom observations, on the one hand, helped with the sampling of student participants in pairs by providing information about their in-class behaviour and their experience of working with girls and boys. On the 8

In all, students have 39 classes involving 15 different subjects to attend throughout the week. Among these 39 classes, English (5), Chinese (5) and mathematics (5) are the three major subjects in both the science and arts classes. Other subjects include biology (3), physics (3), geology (3), chemistry (3), physical education (1), history (3), politics(2), arts (1), exploratory study (2), mechanical techniques(1), class meeting(1) and self-study class(1).

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other hand, it assisted with the design of communicative tasks for the main observation by providing information about students’ language proficiency and tasks they were used to carrying out. Given the educational perspective of the study, the in-class behaviour of the two EFL teachers in Classes A and B was also carefully observed and investigated. This type of observation was oriented towards the likelihood that the English teacher would treat the girls and the boys differently in terms of eye contact, distribution of questions, and nature of the questions. However, since the focus of the research was mainly on the students’ side, because of time and resource limits, observations concerning teachers’ behaviour were neither audio nor video-taped. Only field notes were taken to record the information mentioned above to discover whether the teachers tended to orient boys and girls to particular roles in the English class, and whether this impacted on the way CLT was being presented and organised in the classroom. 4.2.1.1.3 Non-EFL class observations of Class A and B Non-EFL class observations were carried out mainly in Classes A and B and occasionally in other classes as well. The Chinese class, mathematics class, normal and experimentally based physics and chemistry classes were all observed during the fieldwork. The main aim of this type of observation was to identify the distinctive nature of the EFL classes in relation to the role they played in students’ gender construction and its negotiation. Teaching activities, such as the frequency of using communicative tasks, and the form of tasks used in the class, were observed and recorded in fieldnotes. In other words, the observation of other subject classrooms was a way of exploring whether the educational context of the L2 classroom is a place in which gendered attitudes and behaviour can be questioned, discussed and negotiated more frequently, conveniently and safely than in other classroom contexts. This sort of data was also used as triangulated data with the relevant information learned from students’ interviews. 4.2.1.1.4 Observation of extra-curricular activities All-round participant observation can help to provide information about the culture or subculture of the people we are studying (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007). In the case study, in order to gain a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of the student

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participants as well as the school culture, students’ extra-curricular activities were also observed throughout the research, including their social gatherings, the English Week Activity and the school sports meetings. These observations also helped to develop the relationship between the researcher and the researched (see section 4.4.3). Exploration of the research topic and the culture of the population are necessary to develop guideline questions (Carey 1994). Data collected from these observations served the design of the semi-structure interviews and focus group discussions in the study (see sections 4.2.2 and 4.2.3). 4.2.1.2 Observation of communicative tasks as the principal means of observation The main observation in the research was that of student participants’ interactional behaviour in carrying out communicative tasks. In one respect, its purpose was to examine how students enacted gender in interaction, namely their performance of communicative self as girls and boys. It enabled me to reveal any gap between the images of themselves that girls and boys wanted to project in interviews and their actual behaviour in interaction with the others. In another respect, such an observation also aimed to discover students’ behavioural reactions to images they received and constructed with regard to English girls and boys by closely examining their discursive practice in English. Moreover, by comparing this interactional data with their accounts in the interviews, it was hoped that students’ negotiation of their self-positioning in interaction as more that of a Chinese school girl or boy learning English or a school learner of English could be detected. Task variables 9 have been found to impact on “the amount of meaning negotiation, the use of communication strategies, and communicative effectiveness” (Ellis 2003). To elicit rich data and examine the participants’ interactions comprehensively, after the ordinary EFL classroom observation and with the help of the English teacher, four communicative tasks were designed according to students’ interlanguage developmental stage, as well as their everyday interest.10There was one 9

According to Ellis (2003), the variables include “task features”, i.e. variables relating to the goal, type of input, or conditions of a task, and “task implementation”, i.e. variables relating to task procedures. 10 See Appendix B for detailed description of these four communicative tasks.

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free-conversation task, two decision-making tasks and one picture-description task. The conversation task was a totally open task. Students participants were asked to talk with their partner freely on any topic in which they were interested. The first decision-making task required them to discuss and organise a Christmas party for the whole class. The second one asked students to discuss issues concerning the celebration of Father’s Day and Mother’s Day in China, including the necessity or otherwise to celebrate it and the best way to do so. In these two tasks, to help students to come up with more ideas, a list of issues to discuss, as well as a list of possible gifts to buy, were provided for students for reference, although students were also encouraged to think up their own ideas. These lists proved to be necessary when the tasks were piloted with several pairs of students from other classes, with similar characteristic to those of the target group of student participants. It showed that when there was no list for them to consult, it was difficult for them to develop a dialogue due to their level of English proficiency. The main point of performing these two tasks was that students had to come to a final decision/ agreement after negotiating in pairs within the time limit. In the final picture-description task, a common picture was assigned to each pair. One of the students was asked to describe the picture while the other had to draw it according to the partner’s description. The roles of describer and painter were negotiated by the students themselves. Before the task started, the researcher explained each task to the participants to make sure they all understood the tasks and requirements well. All these tasks were designed to yield natural speech samples, especially the first three tasks, because they required the participants to create their own messages spontaneously in interaction. Efforts were made to minimise student participants’ reactivity to the presence of the researcher and the recorder. Firstly, the task observation was carried out in the middle stage of the fieldwork when the researcher-researched relationship had become close and students’ daily behaviour in front of the researcher was natural both inside and outside the class. This was confirmed through their non-verbal interactions in the tasks, including paralinguistic clues (such as tone, intonation and volume), their posture, eye contact and laughter. Secondly, after a preliminary investigation, I learnt that the majority of students had MP3 or MP4 players which had the function of recording. In the school, formal class began around 7:35am. Before this, there was a special 30-minute reading session for students to read either Chinese or English

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texts. Taking advantage of this reading session, I asked students to use their own MP3 or MP4 players to record their own speech daily. This strategy helped them to become familiar with the existence of the recorder when performing tasks. Moreover, according to pre-task interviews and observations, students were not strangers to being audio-recorded since sometimes in the morning reading session, their English teacher would ask them to record their own speech to see whether their pronunciation was correct or whether they could communicate with each other in a fluent way. Some of them had already formed the habit of self-recording. While carrying out the tasks, student participants used their own MP3 or MP4 players to record the dialogue. This, on the one hand, helped students to gain a sense of ownership of this kind of activity; on the other hand, it helped me greatly in solving the problem of obtaining enough recorders. Permission to record their interactions was obtained before they took part in the task. To ensure the recorder worked well, I gathered all the equipment in advance and tested it to see whether it worked well, whether the recording was clear, whether the capacity of recording was long enough and ensured they were fully charged in advance. Furthermore, I also labelled the recorders with a tiny tag in order to match them with the users. Thirdly, the classroom where the activity took place was the classroom in which students frequently had their lectures. Such a familiarity with the physical environment was also designed to decrease their reactivity. Students’ interactions were mainly audio-recorded. Realising that their non-verbal interaction might also be as invaluable as their verbal interactions, I relied on fieldnotes instead of video-recording to record those non-verbal interactions which seemed important to me based on the following reasons. Firstly, although videotape recordings are extremely useful in micro ethnographic studies, the using of videotape equipment is notably intrusive and can be threatening for some (Fetterman 1998). Students were familiar with being audio-recorded in and outside the class, but had never been video recorded before. Hence, doing video-recording could be potentially intrusive for the students. Secondly, one or two video-cameras were not enough if I wanted to capture specific non-verbal interaction and it was really difficult for me to set it up to focus on all the pairs’ interactions. In order to make the fieldnotes more concrete and precise, a picture of the planned seating arrangement was drawn in advance and detailed notes about each pair’s non-verbal behaviour were filled in accordingly

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in the picture, including their posture, eye contact, gestures used to help to express their meanings, and the individual who was holding the recorder. Furthermore, those paralinguistic features, such as sighing, pausing, laughing, intonation, volume rising/falling and emphasis were traced by listening to the recordings of their verbal interactions carefully.

4.2.2 Interviews Interviews enable participants to discuss their interpretations of the world in which they live, and to express how they regard situations from their own viewpoints. It would be better served by obtaining data which provide more of an in-depth insight into the topic, drawing on information provided by fewer informants (Cohen, et al. 2003). In the research, different sorts of interview were conducted to obtain participants’ in-depth views on issues on gender and EFL learning, including the main interviews with the selected student participants before and after the communicative tasks, and the formal and informal interviews with a wide range of EFL and other subject teachers, school leaders and students in the school community (see following Table 4-3 for a summary of the types of interview conducted in the research). All formal interviews conducted in the research were in a one-to-one semi-structured form which not only gave the interviewee a degree of power and control over the course of the interview but also offered the interviewer a great deal of flexibility (Nunan 1992). The researcher sometimes followed up students’ lines of inquiry if they were relevant to the research topic. In other words, questions being asked in interview continued to evolve. Questions put forward or replies provided by some students, which were not included in the original outline, might be asked in the next interview with another student. All the interviews were conducted in Chinese (see section 4.4.1 for discussion of choice of language). Conversations between the interviewer and interviewees were audio-recorded. Fieldnotes were not taken at the same time as the audio-recording to make the interaction with the participants more natural, communicative and smooth. However, on finishing each interview, fieldnotes about the degree of involvement and some non-verbal signals were taken down according to memory to supplement the audio-recording.

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Table 4-3 Types of interview conducted in the research Types of interview (*principal interview of the research) *Pre-task interview (task refers to the four communicative tasks designed in the research)

*Task follow-up interview

Formal interview with 18 EFL teachers and head-teachers (6 males and 12 females including the EFL teachers in Class A and B)

Participants

Main purpose of the interview

Individual girl or boy with the female researcher

To explore: (1)students’ representations of ideal gender characterisations; (2)students’ personal and social selves in terms of being a girl or boy; (3)advantages and constraints students met in negotiating gender as EFL learners; (4)general viewpoints of English girls and boys; (5)sources of student representations of English girls and boys; (6)background information about gender-related issues and the EFL learning and teaching situation students experienced To explore: (1)students’ rationalisation of their own interactional behaviour in tasks; (2) experience of working with same-sex students and opposite-sex students; (3)their negotiation of self-positioning in performing the tasks between being Chinese girls/boys learning English and students at school learning English. To explore: (1)information about teachers’ aims and goals of EFL teaching; (2)their own experience of learning and teaching English; (3)their awareness of gender issues in relation to EFL learning; (4)more information about student participants; To help to design the communicative tasks to be used

Individual girl or boy with the female researcher

Individual teacher with the female researcher

54 Formal interview with 10 non-English teachers Informal interview with students in Classes A and B

Formal interview with 3 school leaders (2 were in charge of the EFL learning in the school)

Chapter Four Individual teacher with the female researcher Individual student in the classes with the female researcher

Individual school leader with the female researcher

To explore: (1) the specific characteristics of the EFL class; (2)more information about student participants To explore: (1) more background information about EFL teaching and learning in the class as well as gender issues; (2) more information about those target student participants; to help the sampling of students in pairs and the use of “Friends” in discussion; To help other students to feel they were involved in the research To explore information about the school policy on EFL teaching and gender issues as well as school leaders’ attitudes towards them

4.2.2.1 Ongoing interviews with members of the school community to collect supplementary data Informed by the sociocultural approach to the study, interviews were conducted alongside observations with members of the school community, including students, teachers and school leaders, in both formal and informal ways11. At the very beginning of the research, interviews were conducted to gain background and contextual knowledge about the EFL teaching and learning environment in the school community, students’ performance in English, school members’ attitudes towards some basic gender issues, such as the seating arrangement and the ratio of girls to boys in class. Information collected from these formal and informal interviews helped in the sampling of pairs of students to carry out tasks. In the sampling stage, I had to take many factors into consideration from the perspective of the influences they might exert on students’ interactional behaviour, such as the 11

Informal interview refers to the researcher’s casual talks/conversations with students, teachers and school leaders.

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personality of the students, the relationship between the two students in the pair (e.g. whether they were good friends and got on well with each other) (see section 4.1.2). Furthermore, information obtained from these interviews also helped to make the decision to use of the American TV series “Friends” in focus group discussions. In addition, it helped in the design of guideline questions for the focus group as well (see section 4.2.3). In the research, interviews were not only conducted with the selected 54 students but also with their classmates. Students in the school lived in dormitories from Monday to Friday every week. Normally 8 students in a class shared a same room. Hence they knew each other very well and could provide useful information about the targeted students, for example, their personality and enthusiasm in learning English. Moreover, since they had had the experience of same English teaching and learning in the class, information provided by them could be effectively used to triangulate that provided by the selected students. In addition, to obtain more comprehensive knowledge about the sociocultural context of the school community in relation to the EFL teaching and learning atmosphere and gender issues, students in other classes across the three grades were also occasionally interviewed. Alongside the students, 18 EFL teachers (6 males and 12 females) and 10 other subject teachers, including the teachers in Classes A and B, were also interviewed. It was hoped that through interviewing the EFL teachers, not only the EFL teaching situation in the school but also their on-site teaching practice and their rationalisation of it could be explored. Moreover, it was hoped that more general information about girls’ and boys’ behaviour in the EFL class and specific information about the selected students could be gained, including their English performance, personalities, family backgrounds, and relationships between classmates and deskmates.12 The information not only contributed to the sampling of students, but also to the data analysis and interpretation. Furthermore, teachers’ own experience of English learning and teaching and its use as a tool to improve gender awareness and performance was also investigated to see whether it had exerted influence on students’ gender awareness and performance and whether these teachers had ever thought of the potential educational value of EFL teaching and learning in terms of learners’ self-development. The aim of interviewing other subject teachers was to investigate the particularity of the EFL class, as well as 12

The EFL teachers in Classes A and B were also headteachers of the classes.

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to gain more information about the student participants. In addition, three school leaders (two of them were in charge of the EFL teaching in the school) were also interviewed to gain information about the school policy on EFL teaching and gender issues. 4.2.2.2 Principal research interview 4.2.2.2.1 Pre-task interviews with student participants Semi-structured interviews were conducted twice with the 27 pairs of students individually before and after their involvement in carrying out the four communicative tasks respectively (see Appendix C for examples of questions in the semi-structured interview outline). Each interview lasted for about 30 to 50 minutes. It was due to the following considerations that the pre-task interviews were conducted. Firstly, they were designed to gather information about the EFL learning and teaching students experienced, including their attitudes towards, and goals concerning, learning English, their ordinary EFL class organisation, the frequently used task forms in the EFL class, their teachers’ attitudes towards girls and boys, and effects on students’ performance and attitudes towards EFL learning. Secondly, they aimed to investigate the ideal female and male images in students’ minds by examining their attitudes towards, and their own choice of, arts and science classes, as well as their answers to some of the same questions which could indicate their representations of their own images as a girl or boy; for example, questions about what they imagined their own future to be. Thirdly, the purpose was to probe students’ general impressions of English girls and boys, and the source of their gender representations, which were later triangulated with their relevant viewpoints in focus group discussions. Fourthly, the aim was also to discover their familiarity with the TV series “Friends” which helped to decide on the use of it in focus group discussions. Fifthly, this sort of interview was designed also to learn about students’ gender awareness in the course of learning EFL to see whether they had realised that there was an issue of relating to the learning of EFL in terms of realising and negotiating their gender performance. In addition, data collected from this pre-task interview helped in the design of the four communicative tasks and the formation of some guideline questions for focus group discussions later on.

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4.2.2.2.2 Task follow-up interview with student participants Retrospective interviews were conducted with student participants individually after they had completed the tasks. After listening to the audio-recordings of students’ verbal interactions, as well as examining the fieldnotes of their non-verbal behaviours in tasks, those important and interesting points that needed to be further investigated were specified as the major topics and issues to be covered in the follow-up interviews. Selected clips of audiotapes were used as stimuli for recall. Since the interview was conducted soon after the tasks, students had quite clear memories of their behaviour in the task according to their responses to the questions being asked. Some students could remember their behaviour vividly without the help of the audiotapes as stimuli. Each interview was divided into two parts and lasted for about 20 to 30 minutes. The first part mainly aimed to act as warm-up for the interview and to help students to feel relaxed by asking questions about their general feelings about performing the tasks, their preferences in terms of the four tasks and their feelings about working with their partners. The second part of the interview aimed to probe into students’ rationalisation of their interactional behaviour when doing the tasks. On the one hand, checking whether students’ accounts were compatible with their actual behaviour, helped to reveal whether there were any gaps between the image of themselves as girls and boys that they wanted to project in interviews and the one they actually performed in the course of interaction. On the other hand, combining the interactional data collected from the communicative tasks with students’ rationalisation of their behaviour helped to make clear their negotiation of self-positioning in performing the tasks between being Chinese girls/boys learning English and students at school learning English. Alongside these interviews, informal interviews were also carried out at a late stage of the research. On the one hand, information that was overlooked in the previous research stage could be gathered through these late-stage interviews; on the other hand, those questions being asked at the previous stage were asked again at the later stage to see whether the research had helped students to think about their EFL learning and gender construction and awareness, for example, their awareness and realisation of the role the L2 classroom played in providing them with opportunities to reflect and reposition themselves as boys and girls.

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4.2.3 Focus group A group member’s contribution will often elicit another member’s contribution on the same topic (Carey 1994). In this research, focus group discussions were organised on the basis of the following considerations: firstly, the gender topic being dealt with in the research was a very sensitive topic in China, especially among adolescents (see section 3.1). A focus group discussion sometimes is the best approach to a sensitive topic (Carey 1994). Students may feel more relaxed in a group environment in talking about issues concerning gender compared to a one-to-one individual interview with an adult. Secondly, gender-related issues are under-researched in China, partly due to the sensitivity of the topic and the “invisibility” of the issues associated with the absence in the language of a word for ‘gender’ (see section 3.1). One of the most common situations in which focus groups are used is to stimulate an in-depth exploration of a topic about which little is known (Steward and Shamdasani 1998). Hence it was hoped that the use of focus groups could help the researcher to collect more data on gender issues. Thirdly, data to be collected from the focus groups was mainly about student participants’ perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and experiences, as well as some clarification of their statements, which might be enriched through group interactions since individual participants may be encouraged to participate more actively in a group setting (Carey 1994; Carey and Smith 1994). Fourthly, collections of personal experiences and beliefs related to issues of gender and EFL learning could be gathered in focus groups. On the one hand, it enriched the data on the topic; on the other hand, it articulated different individuals’ views, which revealed the dominant view of the community and enabled the researcher to see whether this view was compatible with individuals’ views expressed in one-to-one semi-structured interviews. In other words, data collected from focus groups (the viewpoint of the community) could be effectively triangulated with the data collected from observations and, in particular, interviews (the viewpoint of the individual). There are ambiguities between the concepts of “focus group discussion” and “small group discussion”. Some researchers argue that the whole point of doing a focus group is to see the majority point of view of the group, while in a small-group discussion, the researcher analyses each viewpoint and to see whose views prevail. In this research, I used the term “focus group” to refer to the small-group discussion that I

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organised to obtain collective oral discourse in discussing issues around gender in response to “Friends” for the following reason: on the one hand, I wanted to obtain the main viewpoint of the group by articulating different individuals’ views, namely, what the group independently of the individual agreed with and to see whether this viewpoint was compatible with individuals’ views in the one-to-one semi-structured interviews; on the other hand, in certain cases, I also took into account one specific individual’s viewpoint and listened to the different viewpoints of the group members concerning, for example, their favourite female and male characters in the series. One episode selected from the American drama “Friends” was used as a stimulus to elicit data. Students’ received and constructed images of males and females in native-English-speaking countries and their responses to these images were examined. In one respect, these would reflect students’ views of the “ideal” ways of behaving as a girl or boy in the communities in which they reside. In other respects, their claimed reactions to the gender norms about which they learned and constructed in the course of learning EFL could be triangulated with their actual responses to these norms as displayed through their interactional behaviours in carrying out communicative tasks. This can mirror their awareness and actual use of the learning of EFL in realising, thinking about, and performing gendered social roles. Moreover, the advantages and problems students met in using EFL to become more aware of, as well as to negotiate their gendered identity could also be investigated through the discussion. Questions related to the sources of their gender representations of English girls and boys were also asked to see whether these constructions were based on their imagined or actual personal experience. In addition, students were also asked to amplify their statement by providing detailed examples. In short, the aim was to collect following data through focus group discussions: (1) students’ representations of ideal gender characterisations and girls and boys in English countries; (2) the nature and resources of their learned and constructed views on English girls and boys; (3) students’ claimed reactions to the images they learned and constructed about boys and girls in English countries and (4) the advantages and problems they met in negotiating gender in English.

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4.2.3.1 Justification for the use of “Friends” “Friends” is a popular American television series which premiered on NBC (National Broadcasting Company) on September 22, 1994 in the USA and had its final show in the year 2004. There are 10 series in all. The programme revolved around six friends (three girls and three boys) in the area of Manhattan, New York City, who frequently lived together and shared each other’s happinesses and sadnesses. They are Rachel Green, Monica Geller, Phoebe Buffay, Joey Tribbiani, Chandler Bing and Ross Geller. “Friends” received positive reviews throughout its run and became one of the most popular sitcoms of all time. Repeats of the series continue to air worldwide, and all seasons have been released on DVD. In China, the DVD of “Friends” is available in many bookstores and supermarkets across the country. Some schools even use “Friends” for their teaching material or recommend students to watch this show to improve their English. The decision to use “Friends” as a stimulus in focus group discussions was made after careful consideration. First of all, the three girls and three boys in the show had their own distinct personalities which were successfully depicted in the show. The discussion of these characters’ behaviour during the focus groups gave the researcher useful information on the student participants’ viewpoints on English girls and boys, as well as their images of the ideal female and male. Secondly, the six main characters in the show spent a lot of their time together as a large family. Similarly, students in the research shared a room with their classmates in the school dormitory and spent most of their time together throughout the year (see section 4.2.2.1). In other words, students might easily compare their situation with some of the scenes in the show. Thirdly, since “Friends” is a television drama, both the way in which characters behave and the life they lead may be dramatically exaggerated, in particular, their gendered roles sometimes border on caricature (Lafly, et al. 1996:380). I wanted to see whether students perceived this in a critical way and to question the kind of representations presented when watching the programme to see how much they treated it as if it were reality. Fourthly, students in both Classes A and B were familiar with this television series according to a small survey at the beginning of the research and also in informal interviews. Before I finally decided to use “Friends” in the focus group discussions, I asked all students in Classes A and B to write down their favourite English films or dramas on a piece of paper that I provided. According to the statistics, “Friends” was one of

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the most popular ones. The selected student participants’ familiarity with this drama was also confirmed in interviews. This encouraged me to choose “Friends” since it was already material with which they were familiar. Though “Friends” is an American drama, it is watched throughout the world by adolescents. My view on gender as a social construction means that the use of “Friends” here did not greatly affect the findings that I obtained by using it. In other words, what I mainly investigated was the process of how students constructed gender in discourse and whether they exhibited an essentialist view or a constructivist view of gender roles in their discourse when commenting on the characters. The conscious choice to use “Friends” was intended to reveal students’ stereotypes through presenting media representations. Some people may argue that the show “Friends” itself is a stereotypical construction. When I showed it to students, I was presenting stereotypes to them and they therefore tended to respond in a stereotypical way and based their discussion on stereotypical views. Before this PhD project was conducted, I carried out pilot studies in four other secondary schools in two other cities13 but I did not show “Friends” to them. However, data collected from interviews showed that students in these schools exhibited similar viewpoints on, and comments about, English girls and boys. A similar situation arose at an early stage of this PhD project when I informally interviewed some students in the school, including some of the selected students about their viewpoints on English girls and boys before showing them “Friends”. In other words, it was not because I showed them “Friends” that their comments on English girls’ and boys’ behaviour became stereotypical. It was the images that students already had about English girls and boys that gave rise to their stereotypes of them. If anything, the use of “Friends” only made students’ stereotypical comments clearer and more apparent. 4.2.3.2 Organisation of the focus groups Each class in the school had a large television set up in front of the class, which could be connected to laptops. According to my daily observations, teachers used them frequently to play their PowerPoint lecture notes in class. They also occasionally used the television to show 13

I carried out pilot studies in two secondary schools in Shanghai and two in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province in April 2007.

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students films and songs both during and after the class. In addition, with the permission of the headteacher, students sometimes also played television programmes or films as a way to relax after they had had dinner and before the evening class started. Although students stated earlier that they were familiar with “Friends”, to refresh their memory and with the agreement of the headteachers and students, I played one or two episodes (each lasts for 20 minutes) per week during that period of time when students normally relaxed. Students’ participation in this activity was totally voluntary. The version of “Friends” that I showed to students has Chinese captions on the screen which helped them to understand the content. One episode was finally selected as the particular stimulus for the forthcoming focus group discussions. It told the story of the six main characters’ celebration of Thanksgiving Day together. Most of the English expressions in it were used on a daily base and each character was depicted in detail, not only in collective activities but also in individual close-up shots. There were scenes focusing on one particular character and scenes in which the characters were together, which allowed students to comment on each person’s personality and behaviour. Semi-structured guideline questions (see Appendix D for examples of the guideline questions) were prepared before the discussion, which were modified in the process of conducting the group discussion on the basis of to students’ feedback to each question.14 In the process of playing this particular episode, when students showed observable reactions to a certain scene, such as all laughing together, I would stop the video and asked the reason for such reactions. Moreover, I would also ask students to imagine their reactions if they were in a similar situation to that of the character. For example, when students were watching the scene when one of the characters, Rachael, was trying to borrow money from her boss to buy plane tickets for her coming family trip, apart from asking students to comment on her behaviour, I also asked them questions like, “If you were in such a situation, what would you do?” to try to discover the ideal gender behaviour for a girl in their minds. Literature related to the comments on the representation of gender in “Friends” was collected before the 14

Some of the questions being asked in the group were produced from daily observations, some were from individual interviews, some were from literature review and the rest were formed and being investigated in the process of the group discussions.

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research and some was used in the group discussions to trigger students’ viewpoints. For example, in the focus groups, I read to students a comment on “Friends” collected from the internet, that described one of the characters, Phoebe, was a crazy person. Then I asked students their opinions of this comment. Some students agreed, some did not and they were asked to state their reasons. Such a strategy elicited abundant data on some occasions. Altogether 8 focus groups were organised in the research. The size of each group varied from 6 participants to 10 participants. Three were all-female groups (8 girls/ 6girls/ 6girls), another three were all-male groups (6 boys/ 6 boys/ 6 boys) and the other two were female-male groups (10 students/ 6 students). The discussion was conducted in the room that students normally used for their oral lessons. In that room, there was only one small desk for the teacher’s use. There were no desks for students because in their oral lessons students carried out tasks either in pairs or in the form of group discussion and they had to move their chairs frequently to work with different partners. When they were doing group work, they would sit around in a circle. Such a classroom setting ensured that the setting for the focus group discussions was as natural as possible. When participating in focus group discussions, students were asked to sit around in a circle with the small desk in the middle where microphones and audio-recorders were placed to collect the data. The researcher mainly played the role of monitoring the discussion to promote interaction, guiding the level of participation of members15, and ensuring that the discussion remained on the topic of interest. Sometimes, I chose to follow the group’s lead when interesting topics arose unexpectedly. During the whole process, I encouraged students’ responses but did not involve myself in their discussion per se, and made a special effort to remain neutral, showing neither agreement nor disagreement with their viewpoints. As claimed by Carey (1994), the purpose of using the focus group technique is to understand, from the perspective of the research participants, the meaning and nature of the research topic as fully as possible. Since the focus group discussion was designed to obtain collective viewpoints of the student participants, members were encouraged to respond to each other by asking such questions as “Do you agree with this?” or “Has anyone had a 15

This means that, for example, if a member was too long-winded, he or she would be gently curbed and attention would be directed to a quieter member.

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similar/different experience?” In order to make students feel more at ease and natural in the process of discussion, only minimal fieldnotes were taken during the session, for example, points to come back to later. On finishing the discussion, fieldnotes dealing with the degree of student participants’ involvement, their imitations of the way characters spoke and behaved in the episode, the physical setting of the group, the seating arrangement of the participants (who sat next to whom), as well as some observable non-verbal signals, were taken down according to memory to supplement the audio-recording. The major pitfall of the focus group technique is the potential impact of censoring and conforming (Carey 1994). To minimise this problem, several strategies were adopted in the study. Firstly, strategies were used to increase trust among the participants and with the researcher. On the one hand, all the members in a group were from the same class and knew each other well, which increased the trust between them. On the other hand, focus group discussions were organised at a late stage in the research when the researcher-researched relationship was well developed. Student participants did not treat the researcher as a stranger who should not be trusted. Moreover, students taking part in the session were informed about the future use of the data. Neither their names nor statements would ever be revealed or identified. They were also required to keep each other’s statements secret and not discuss them with other students. Secondly, data collected from focus groups were later triangulated with data from other sources to see whether it was due to the group effect that they chose to agree with others or whether they really held this viewpoint. The focus group technique was proved to be a useful research technique in the study. Students participating in it reported later that they found the sessions enjoyable, supportive and informative.16 The opportunity to express opinions on the topic of study made them feel important and empowered (see section 9.4).

16

For example, M10 stated, “I think the whole atmosphere was quite relaxed and happy, like day-to-day conversation. It is like attending a “round table meeting”. We communicate in an equal and casual way, there is no psychological burden. I like it.”; (Original Chinese) M10: “៥㾝ᕫ䙷Ͼ (discussion concerning “Friends”) ⇨⇯↨䕗䕏ᵒᛝᖿˈህ䎳ᑇᐌ㘞໽ϔḋDŽ᳝⚍‫ڣ‬೚ḠӮ䆂৻DŽ໻ ᆊѸ⌕↨䕗ᑇㄝˈ䱣ᛣˈг≵᳝ҔМᖗ⧚䋳ᢙˈ៥ᕜ୰⃶DŽ”

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4.2.4 Research diary and documents A research diary and documents were used as ways to assist the collection of data in the project. Firstly, during the whole process of the research, I kept a research diary to record the progress of the research, the participants in each activity, the preparation and organisation of each research activity (what had already been done and what needed to be done or improved in the later stage), the labelling of equipment used in data collection, the problems encountered in data collection and how they were solved, my own emotional feelings at each stage of the research which helped to check and decrease the effects of my own emotional experience on data collection and analysis, the preliminary data coding and analysis, and the new research questions or revised research questions in each task. It served as a memory check in relation to the research process. Secondly, some official documents, such as the New National English Curriculum Standard, their English textbooks, students’ academic records, and detailed arrangements of the English Week Activities were analysed. All these secondary data collection methods not only enriched the whole database by offering important and easily overlooked information, but also increased the validity and authenticity of the data analysis (see Appendix I for the summary of the data collection methods and datasets collected in the research).

4.3 Data analysis Altogether, three principal datasets were collected from the fieldwork: students’ verbal and non-verbal interactions in carrying out communicative tasks; discursive information gathered from both pre-task and task follow-up interviews as well as collective oral discourse collected in focus group discussions on issues concerning gender in response to “Friends” (see table 4-4.1 for an overall view). Alongside the three main datasets, various supplementary data were also collected to better answer the research questions, including data collected from on-going field observations, interviews, documents, and the researcher’s research diary (see table 4-4.2 for an overall view). The current study was dedicated to establishing a way of connecting micro-level phenomena, analysable through audio-recordings and fieldnotes, with the macro-level invisible sociocultural context of the communities in which students lived. In this section, the management and analysis of the three

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principal datasets will be the focus.

4.3.1 The analysis of data collected from communicative tasks The purpose of a study guides the researcher not only in the selection of the methods of data collection, but also in the analysis and interpretation of different types of data (Carey 1994). The main aim of observing students’ interactional behaviour in performing communicative tasks was to see how they enacted gender in interactions in English and what their actual behavioural reactions to images they had constructed of English girls and boys were. This was done by closely examining both their verbal and non-verbal, linguistic and paralinguistic performance (see section 4.2.1.2). It was also hoped that the way in which students appropriated different social roles could be observed by combining the analysis of their performance in carrying out tasks with that of their rationalisations in follow-up interviews. Such aims required me to look very closely and take into account not only the way language was used, but specifically how students performed in the tasks. A dual approach was hence adopted to analyse students’ discursive practice in tasks which involved some features of conversation analysis (CA) but at the same time allowed the researcher to interpret students’ interaction from a functional point of view. CA focuses upon the mechanics of conversation on the basis that any utterance will constrain what can follow it (Seedhouse 2004:18). It studies the social organisation of “conversation” or “talk-in-interaction” by means of a detailed inspection of tape recordings and transcriptions made from such recordings (Itakura 2001). Although CA has made important contributions to a new appreciation of the nature of structures in dialogue, it has an undeveloped social orientation with regard to discourse and does not provide a satisfactory account of discourse processes and interpretation (Tannen 1996:20). In the research, the approach that was used to analyse students’ conversational behaviour was influenced by CA but was not pure CA. The research theme of examining the construction and negotiation of EFL learners’ gender identities brought the concept of “social interaction” to prominence in the study. On the one hand, I was interested in students’ enactment and performance of gender and CA as a sociological type of analysis is an immediate technique which may be used to observe the conversational management and the management of self in relation to others in

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interaction. Investigation of interactional management devices, such as topics initiation and closure, turn-taking, and interruption, can provide information from which we can infer the nature of gender roles and identities. In other words, CA allows the researcher to observe and account for the management of conversational interaction and the features of conversation which may be gender-related. On the other hand, I also allowed inclusion in my analysis of other elements of discourse analysis (DA), namely, I contributed my own interpretation of certain aspects of discourse which are an interpretation of the illocutionary and perlocutionary acts of students’ speech in conversation 17 . In the research, although I was interested in the performance of the gender roles socially, at the same time I was also interested in the language learning in the classroom to see what gendered characterisations of English girls and boys students had formulated and how they reacted to these images discursively and practically. Linguistic features including the exact lexis students used to express their viewpoints and paralinguistic features, such as pitch level, volume, tone and intonation, were both examined to see how students as EFL learners looked at and performed gendered social roles across different communities. In short, as an SLE researcher focusing on the social and pedagogical implications of SLL, I had to cope with the limits of the CA approach and to bring in elements of analysis which were interpretative from the Chinese point of view in my analytical scheme (see section 4.4.1 for issues relating to translation). Non-verbal features, such as gesture, seating posture and eye contact, were also examined as representing clues about gender. In a word, the methodological tools directed me to not entirely accepting the whole package of CA but to use it as an input to, and furnish my interpretations of, interactional phenomena displayed by students in performing communicative tasks in English. Due to the nature of the analytical approach, audio-recordings of students’ interactions in carrying out tasks were transcribed in great detail, supplemented by descriptions of non-verbal interactions and 17

According to Yule (1996:48-49) there are three dimensions of individuals” speech. One is the “locutionary act” which is the basic act of utterance, or the producing of a meaningful linguistic expression. One is the “illocutionary act” which is performed via the communicative force of an utterance, the intended meaning. The remaining one is the “perlocutionary act” which is the actual effect of the utterance, whether intended or not.

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contextual information recorded in fieldnotes. Those paralinguistic features which could be heard and gestures which I had noticed and taken down as notes were added to the transcription (see Appendix E for transcription conventions). Based on phenomena observed in the transcriptions, five main categories with subcategories were identified in analysing the conversational behaviour. They were “interactional management”, “speech acts assigned by the researchers from utterances made by participants”, “linguistic features”, “paralinguistic features” and “non-verbal features” (see Table 4-4 for analytical framework of communicative tasks). The interactions of female-male pairs were mainly investigated to see how, when girls and boys worked together, they interacted with each other verbally and non-verbally by positioning themselves in relation to each other. Girls and boys behaviour in the same-sex pairs was also examined to provide the basis (i.e. to characterise what seemed to be prominent in the same-sex pairs) for the analysis of the cross-sex pairs. Table 4-4 Analytical framework for communicative tasks

Interactional management devices

Conversational Behaviour

Speech acts assigned by researcher from utterances used by participants Linguistic features

topic initiation and closure turn-taking pausing (reaction to pausing) interruption (including overlapping) code-switching repair (self-repair and repair of the partner) agreement and disagreement praise/compliment apology request lexical choice

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Paralinguistic features

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tone and intonation volume emphasis and stress pitch level whispering smiling or laughing gesture seating posture eye contact body touch

4.3.2 The analysis of data collected from focus group discussions The principal aim of organising focus group discussions was to discover students’ gender representations of English girls and boys and their claimed responses to these representations. By means of these, their representations of ideal gender characterisations and their personally gendered selves in relation to their socially gendered selves were also likely be revealed. As well as listening to each individual’s viewpoints, the focus groups were designed to reveal the dominant opinion of the group as articulated by the individuals (see section 4.2.3). Such purposes caused me to decide not to use CA when analysing data collected from focus group discussions, but to choose an analytical scheme which was interpretive in nature. It embodied some features of the ethnographic approach to communication, which was originally put forward by Hymes (1967, 1971, 1972, 1978) and focused on the patterning of communicative behaviour and was directed at the description and understanding of communicative behaviour in specific cultural settings (Carey 1994:1). Both macro-level and micro-level analysis were conducted to analyse focus group discussions by looking at not only the content of the students’ discussion, but also the way this was actually achieved in both exact words and paralanguage. Therefore, audio-recordings of students’ discussion in the focus groups were also transcribed in detail, supplemented by fieldnotes (see section 4.2.3). I was interested in the phenomena of what was actually socially happening in a group and also the agreement about particular aspects of interpretation by students of that age which represented some common views. Hence the transcription

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conventions used in analysing communicative tasks which would not normally be used for focus group discussions were adopted and found to be useful because they allowed the researcher to see, for example, moments when there was suddenly full agreement by all the boys or all the girls (see section 4.2.3 for the definition of focus groups in the research). Firstly, students’ viewpoints were sorted into seven categories: (1) Students’ comments on the six characters in “Friends”; (2) Students’ general gender representations of English girls and boys; (3) Students’ representations of ideal gender images generated by comparing the characters in “Friends” with themselves; (4) Sources of the representations of English males and females that students had constructed; (5)Students’ ability to critically see the representations of males and females in “Friends”; (6)Students’ claims about where they could try out different ways of behaving as girls and boys via the medium of the English language; (7) Advantages and problems the students came across in negotiating gender as EFL learners. Secondly, the micro-level of analysis was also carried out to see how students competitively articulated their viewpoints in both exact words and paralanguage in the group. Table 4-5 illustrates the analytical framework of focus group discussion. Table 4-5 Analytical framework for focus group discussion about the television series “Friends”

Macro-level Analytical Categories

Students’ comments on the six characters in “Friends” Students’ general representations of English girls and boys Students’ representations of ideal gender characterisations generated by comparing the characters in “Friends” with themselves Sources of the representations of English males and females that students had constructed Students’ ability to critically see the representations of males and females in “Friends”

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Students’ claims about where they could try out different ways of behaving as girls and boys via the medium of the English language Advantages and problems the students came across in negotiating gender as EFL learners Linguistic features lexical choice Interactional interruption (including management device overlapping) tone and intonation Paralinguistic features pitch level volume emphasis whispering smiling or laughing Non-verbal interactional device eye contact gesture

4.3.3 The analysis of data collected from interviews Content analysis (Ezzy 2002; Kellehear 1993) was conducted to analyse data collected from both pre-task and task follow-up interviews, which aimed to collect individual students’ viewpoints on issues related to gender and EFL learning (see section 4.2.2). Data analysis in the research was a reiterative activity which continued throughout the course of the study, including the data collection stage. In the process of collecting data, the development of coding schemes and themes to be analysed were all noted down in the research diary (see section 4.2.4). Connections were made between these codes and the research topics, namely, on gender and EFL learning. Some of the coding and themes arose as a result of the questions asked by the researcher, while others were not anticipated by the researcher in advance but were initiated by the students themselves in the interviews. These notes, the aims of the pre-task interview, the semi-structured outlines of the interview and the first listening through of the audio-recordings of interviews, all helped to identity following themes, which would become the main ones to be investigated when analysing pre-task interview data: (1) information about the science and arts classes; (2) other general gender-related issues; (3) students’ knowledge of the way English girls and boys behave; (4)

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students’ experience of learning English at school; (5) advantages and problems students had encountered in negotiating gender in English; (6) students’ knowledge concerning “Friends”. Audio-recordings of students’ presentations in interviews were then selectively transcribed and translated accordingly. Based on the transcriptions, the researcher analysed the raw data and developed codes and categories which reflected similar themes. Table 4-6 lists the coding categories of the pre-task interview. Table 4-6 List of coding categories in pre-task interview Main themes 1.Information about the science and arts classes 2.Other gender-related issues 3.Students’ knowledge of the way English girls and boys behave

4.Students’ experience of learning English at school

Main coding categories Students’ choice of the class type Reason for their choice Opinions on the imbalanced ration of girls to boys in arts and science class Seating arrangement in the class Students’ viewpoints on the seating arrangement they have experienced so far* Girls and boys imagination of their own future Students’ general impressions of English girls and boys Sources of students representations of English girls and boys Key sites for students to try out unfamiliar/different ways of behaving as English girls and boys Students’ familiarity with tasks and pairwork Forms of task students experienced in the EFL class Students’ aims and goals in learning English The role of the teacher played in students’ learning of English Characteristics of the ideal EFL classroom that students wanted to experience Differences claimed by students between the way girls and boys learn English*

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5.Advantages and problems students had encountered in negotiating gender in English

6.Students’ knowledge concerning “Friends”

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Students’ experience of working with same- and opposite-sex students, both in and outside the EFL class Students’ intentions concerning further study abroad Students’ attendance and enthusiasm in extra-curricular English activities* Influence of learning English on students’ daily behaviour* Specific characteristics of using English as a foreign language in interaction compared with Chinese* Specific characteristics of the EFL class compared to other subject classes Constraints and pressures from the examination system Sense of belonging to Chinese community Difference students stated between the way they themselves and the English girls and boys behave Familiarity with the series “Friends” General comments about the series and the characters

Note: the category marked with “*” indicates that data coded under this category arose from questions and issues put forward by students themselves in interaction with the researcher in interviews.

The task follow-up interview consisted of two parts with the aim of providing a warm-up for the interview and collecting basic information about gender-related issues in the EFL class, exploring students’ socially and personally gender selves, as well as identifying their self-positioning in terms of orienting themselves either towards the student/learner aspect or the gender aspect of identity (see section 4.2.2.2). Data collected from this interview was analysed accordingly based on the following coding categories: (1) Students’ feelings about carrying out the tasks and their preference in relation to the tasks; (2) Students’ preferences regarding the four tasks; (3) students’ comments on their partner’s behaviour in the

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tasks; (4) Students’ preference in terms of the partners they work with and their reasons (same or opposite sex students); (5) Students’ rationalisation of their own behaviour in tasks (e.g. leading role; selection of the role in picture-description tasks; interruption; topic change; decision-making; agreement and disagreement). Special attention was paid to whether there were any occasions when their rationalisation did not conform to how they actually behaved in interactions, which helped to reveal the gap between their personally and communicatively gendered selves.

4.3.4 Arrangement of data presentation and interpretation In this case study, contextual information was treated as an integral part in data analysis, interpretation and presentation. As Wenger (1998:70) notes, the focus of the unit of analysis of identity should be on the process of the mutual constitution between the community and the person. If we pay too much attention to the individual while ignoring the community, “the interconnectedness of identity is missed”. In contrast; if we ignore the individual, “generalisations and stereotypes may occur which will miss the lived complexity of identity”. Morse (1994) also states, people’s behaviour can be understood only in context and we cannot separate elements of human behaviour from their relevant contexts of meaning and purpose. Any attempt to understand communication patterns in a community must begin with data on the historical background of the community (Carey 1994:114). As a result, a close eye was kept on the analysis of the research context in order to truly understand the data, which involved issues such as the following: broad sociocultural contexts within which the school community resides; the general English teaching and learning environment in the school; students’ personalities, their familiarity and personal relationship with their partners; their family background, their academic performance in EFL (both written and spoken English) and other subjects; the effect of being in a group in focus group discussions; the effect of the presence of the researcher; and the researcher-researched relationship (see section 4.4.3 for further discussion). They may influence features of communication in ways that are not evident from a focus on communicative patterns and content alone (Carey 1994). In addition, due to the nature of the research questions and following the approaches adopted in data analysis and presentation,

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software like NVIVO was not used in data analysis because it could easily decontextualise data and lose the complexities and subtleties of texts (Roger 2004). On the one hand, I had to pay close attention to social interactions among students, including their verbal and non-verbal interactions, and linguistic and paralinguistic features. In other words, what I was dealing with was not only the language itself, but also the way students were interacting and the way they used the language to behave as girls and boys across linguistic communities (i.e. the way they negotiated their social persona in English). On the other hand, I also had to take into account the contextual information concerning students’ discursive practice. Even in one-to-to interviews, issues like individual girls and boys being interviewed by a female researcher and their degree of involvement in the activity which was embodied in both verbal and non-verbal behaviour had to be taken into account (see section 4.4.3 for more explanation). In addition, although both interviews and focus group discussion were conducted in Chinese, code-switching, which sometimes has significant social implications (Gumperz 1982; Wardhaugh 1988) occurred during the process. Using software like NVIVO makes it difficult to identify the social meaning of code-switching in context because it is intended to abstract the use of language from its social context. In short, I had to get to the bottom of the data and thus kept a close eye on the contextual information collected to ensure the accurate interpretation of students’ viewpoints in discourse. Moreover, in order to answer the research questions as comprehensively as possible from a critical point of view, these three datasets collected from observation of students’ interaction in performing tasks, focus group discussions on “Friends” and pre-task and task follow-up interviews were analysed and presented in a triangulated and complementary manner (see section 4.4.5 for further discussion on the issue of triangulation). Table 4-7 provides an overview of data analysis and presentation in the book.

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4.4 Reflexive discussion on the methodology of the research 4.4.1 The decision to use Chinese instead of English in interviews and focus groups The choice of language use for interviews and focus group discussions was a carefully weighed aspect of the methodology because of the effects it might have. In the research, only communicative tasks which aimed to discover how students enacted gender in English were completed in English, while all interviews and focus group discussions were conducted in Chinese. Firstly, if English had been used in interviews and focus group discussions, because of students’ level of proficiency in English, it could have led to many misunderstandings and need for clarifications, especially in consideration of the fact that I myself am not an English native speaker. This was not useful, given my research intent, and would have discouraged the students. Students might also have spoken less in English if constrained by their lack of language proficiency. Secondly, since I am not a native English speaker, if I had chosen to organise these activities in English, it might have negatively affected my relationship with the students. They might have felt distance and divergence from the researcher psychologically and hence spoke less freely. Thirdly, the fact that “gender” and “sex” are not linguistically distinguished in Chinese made investigating issues on gender in English with Chinese girls and boys impractical. Students might not have understood what the researcher meant by the term “gender”. They might not have heard at all and there would have been the need for much explanation to avoid misunderstandings. As a result, when explaining my research topic to some teachers and friends in China, I had to give really detailed explanations of the concept of “gender” in order to help them to understand it clearly. Moreover, the natural setting of the field might have been jeopardised since students were not used to communicating with each other in English outside the EFL class and it would more easily have made them feel they were being researched. The decision to use Chinese in interviews and focus groups was verified as a reasonable choice in the later stage interviews and daily talk with student participants. Many of them mentioned that since Chinese is their mother tongue, they can say whatever they want, can express their meanings

Table 4-7 Overview of the data analysis and data presentation in the research Macro-level analysis

1. The social, cultural and economic context of the community students reside in and individual students’ circumstances 2. Students’ choice of science class and arts class (revealing Chinese students’ ideal female and male representations in relation to subject orientation and their personal and social selves as girls or boys) 3. Sources of students’ representations of English girls and boys 4. Students’ identity claims in relation to their representations of English girls and boys (revealing students’ claimed reactions to gender representations of English girls and boys) 5. Students’ claims about where they can try out different ways of behaving as girls and boys in English 6. Students’ claims in discourse concerning the advantages of the EFL class as a site for gender awareness and performance 7. Students’ claims in discourse concerning the advantages of the use of English as a foreign language in interaction regarding gender awareness and performance 8. Students’ claims in discourse about the disadvantages in using the English language, the EFL class or the educational situation to improve gender performance and awareness 9. Accounts in discourse by students about their interactional behaviour in tasks (helping to outline students’ negotiation of self-positioning as that of a school learner of English or a Chinese girl or boy learning English in interaction)

Micro-level analysis

1. Students’ detailed comments on the six main characters in “Friends” (revealing student’ gender representations of girls and boys in both English and Chinese communities and their personal and social selves as girls or boys) 2. Evidence of students’ attempts to behave in different ways as girls or boys in English in carrying out tasks (revealing students’ actual behavioural reactions to gender representations of English girls and boys) 3. Detailed analysis of verbal and non-verbal international gender performance in communicative tasks (helping outline students’ negotiation of selfpositioning as that of a school learner of English or a Chinese girl or boy learning English in interactions and revealing their communicative selves as girls or boys)

Notes: 1) micro-level analysis refers to the analysis of the linguistic, paralinguistic and non-verbal behaviour in interactional discourse, while macrolevel analysis (based on themes) refers to the analysis of the social, cultural, economic and contextual information of the research community and its members, as well as the viewpoints and claims that participants made in the research; 2) The texts in corresponding colours indicate data were triangulated from both the macro and micro level of analysis.

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exactly and correctly in interviews and group discussions and will feel more natural in doing it. For example, M14 commented that he liked the focus group session very much because of the free atmosphere of discussion, and because it was in Chinese, he could express his meaning very well. He further explained that if they were asked to speak in English, they might have less to say due to shortage of vocabulary and might not feel at ease.18 Although using Chinese helped the students and the researcher to understand each other more easily and allowed students to express their viewpoints in a more mature manner, ways needed to be found to solve the fundamental problem related to the invisible and sensitive notion of “gender” in the Chinese language and people’s minds, which made discussions in Chinese particularly difficult linguistically. In the study, I turned this disadvantage into advantage. In a sense, I never mentioned the difference between gender and sex per se in interactions with the students. Instead, I consciously made the decision to address issues indirectly by asking students to talk about those cultural aspects of social and linguistic behaviour which were related to gender, such as the choice of class types, the seating arrangement in class, their experience of learning English. In addition, strategies were also used to solve the issue of translation from Chinese into English to ensure the right interpretation and presentation of students’ viewpoints for readers. There were issues which included extracting and interpreting the meanings of terms in Chinese and those related to finding the right words and expressions in English to help readers to capture the possible connotation of the Chinese term used. When translating Chinese to English especially when there was no exact correspondence between words and concepts in the two languages, I concentrated, as a priority, on the social meaning of the word in its context by not only orientating translation to a single word, 18

(Original Chinese) M14: “៥ᕜ୰⃶”Friends”䅼䆎䙷Ͼ⌏ࡼˈ಴ЎᭈϾ⇯ೈ ᕜ䕏ᵒDŽ✊ৢ಴Ўᰃ⫼Ё᭛䅼䆎ˈ᠔ҹ៥Ӏᕜᆍᯧህᡞ㞾Ꮕⱘᛇ⊩䛑䇈ߎᴹ њDŽབᵰԴ䅽៥Ӏ⫼㣅䇁䅼䆎ⱘ䆱ˈ䙷ৃ㛑៥ӀህϡӮ䇈䙷М໮њˈԴⶹ䘧 ៥Ӏ䆡∛ᑊϡᰃᕜЄᆠˈ✊ৢᛳ㾝гӮᕜ༛ᗾˈϡ㞾೼ˈ⫼㣅䇁ⱘ䆱DŽ”; M14: “I like the activity of discussing “Friends” very much. The whole atmosphere is very free. Moreover, because the discussion was conducted in Chinese, we expressed our opinions easily. If you ask us to discuss in English, we may not say that much. You know, we don’t have many vocabulary and we will feel strange, uneasy, if (it was carried out) in English.”

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but also interpreting the meaning in the context. In other words, on the one hand, I took account of the interpretation of the semiotics of what was going on in the Chinese conversational context between the researcher and the students. On the other hand, I had to make sure readers who know nothing about Chinese could understand what was actually going on. This was especially the case when translating those words that have special social, cultural meanings or those dialects or jargon commonly used among students. For example, on commenting on the six main characters, the Chinese expressions “໻ཇҎ”, “ཇᔎҎ” were first translated literally into “big woman” and “strong woman” respectively. Detailed explanations of the true meaning of these two terms in the Chinese community were clarified further after this literal translation. Those dialects (such as “ ૤ ”) were first translated into the corresponding meaning in standard Chinese (“૤” in standard Chinese means “‫ڏ‬ТТ” ) and then the standard Chinese was translated into English as “simple-minded”. What is more, the term “simple-minded” in Chinese can be used both as a derogatory term, meaning “foolish” or “stupid”, and as a commendatory one, meaning “pure”. Language in use and social interaction in context is complex. Because of the context, I noted in the book that “simple-minded” in that student’s discourse was used as equivalent to “pure” (see section 5.1). In short, there were a need to extract and interpret from the Chinese language the actual meaning of a term in Chinese (i.e. a Chinese-Chinese problem) and the task of translating it into English accurately (i.e. a Chinese-English problem). Such strategies were used on other occasions when certain Chinese words were used, had multiple different meanings in different contexts. It helped to improve the validity of data analysis by increasing the accuracy of interpretation. Ethnographers are obliged to describe their own background when they are interpreting and why they are making the particular interpretations in question (Robison 1985:79). I, as the researcher of the study, was not only from the same city19 as the student participants but had also graduated from the same secondary school 11 years previously (see section 4.1.1). In other words, I shared a lot of cultural knowledge associated with the use of language in the local community, which helped me to better understand at least some of what students actually meant when articulating their views. As argued by Savile-Troike (1989), 19

Students in the school were all from the same city.

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one advantage of studying one’s own culture and attempting to make explicit the systems of understanding which are implicit is that the researcher can explore the depths to discover the subtle interconnections of meaning in the ways that the outsider could attain only with great difficulty, if at all. He further states that shared knowledge, including that concerning locally meaningful linguistic and cultural phenomena20, is essential to explain the shared presuppositions and value judgements which are the essential underpinnings of language structure and of contextually appropriate usage and interpretation. Having been brought up in the same local community allowed me easily to understand what students meant by using particular terms that had strong social and cultural meanings, especially the particular dialects and jargon students used.

4.4.2 Difficulties due to the sensitivity of the research topic Due to the difficulty of addressing gender issue in the Chinese community, especially among adolescents, the following strategies were used to help students to feel at ease when discussing relevant topics. Firstly, questions in relation to gender were asked in an indirect way by asking students to talk about those cultural aspects of social and linguistic behaviour, which were related to gender (see section 4.4.1). For example, when discussing issues concerning the arts class and the science class, many students referred to the traditional cultural viewpoint that it was better for girls to choose the arts class and boys to choose the science class. Following their references to this topic, conversation on gender-related issues was developed in a natural and relaxed manner. Secondly, the sequence of questions being asked was also arranged with careful consideration. For instance, when asking for students’ 20

Linguistic knowledge includes verbal elements; non-verbal elements; patterns of elements in particular speech; range of possible variants (in all elements and their organisation); meaning of variants in particular situations. Interactional skills include perception of salient features in communicative situations; selection and interpretation of forms appropriate to specific situations, roles and relationships (rules for the use of speech); discourse organisation and processes; norms of interaction and interpretation; strategies for achieving goals. Cultural knowledge includes social structure; values and attitudes; cognitive maps/schemata; enculturation processes (transmission of knowledge and skills) (Savile-Troike 1989:24).

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impressions of English girls and boys in interviews, I firstly talked with them about the teaching content of their EFL class, what they learned about English culture in the EFL class and then moved the questioning on to gender-related issues. Thirdly, questions about gender issues were not asked one after another, instead, they were inserted among others concerning non-gender-related issues. For example, after I had asked students questions about their opinions on the stereotyped views of girls’ and boys’ selection of class types, I shifted the topic to their learning of English in the EFL class. When students mentioned that teachers sometimes talked to them about English culture and social customs, I then asked them how much they knew about English culture and what their impressions of English girls and boys were. Such a strategy allowed students to feel more at ease in talking about gender issues by distracting them from the focus of the interview. Fourthly, because of the sensitivity of gender in the Chinese context, I had to paraphrase some questions tactfully. This strategy, however, could be problematic in trying to move the interviews in the right direction. For example, after students mentioned how English culture had been presented to them in class, I asked them questions about their impressions of English girls and boys. Answers given by some students were on issues such as the food they had, their learning ability, their examination systems, but no information on the way girls and boys behaved in their daily life. On the one hand, they were just repeating what their teachers had told them about the culture. Because teachers did not tell them about girls’ and boys’ culture, hence the students were not aware of these issues. On the other hand, the phenomenon that students did not reply to my questions but eschewed them entirely reinforced the fact that it was a topic that was not to be discussed. Even if it is spoken about, it is not understood; students did not really “hear” the questions. In another word, it was a question but a question that did not receive an answer. As a result, following their replies, I paraphrased the question into “What’s your impression of English girls’ and boys’ behaviour?” which was a more explicit question for them to answer. Finally, the arrangement of the sequence of each research activity was also carefully set up. For instance, focus group discussions were conducted at a late stage in the research, after pre-task interviews and communicative tasks, based on the following consideration. On the one hand, because it aimed to directly obtain students’ views on the way English girls and boys behave, if it had been carried out at an early stage of the research, students would have had too a strong sense of the fact

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that gender issues were my main research focus, which might have constrained their behaviour in all kinds of tasks. It might have oriented their thinking to the issues too explicitly. On the other hand, it was only after I had more information about the research context and the research participants that focus group discussions could be carried out more easily in order to obtain more valid data (see section 4.2.3).

4.4.3 The effect of the presence of the researcher in the study The development of the researcher-researched relationship was an ongoing process and was treated particularly seriously in this study. As stated by Cohen, et al. (2003), the researcher’s gender, ethnicity, age, professional experience and other social identity play an essential role in both data collection and interpretation. They will affect the way the researcher is perceived by the researched. In the study, the relationship between the researcher and the researched was developed multi-faceted. The term of address students used with the researcher showed the respective situational roles we had from their perspective: moved from being a female researcher to a senior fellow apprentice, from a teacher to a friend. On the one hand, in the study, because I had graduated from the same school, after knowing it, some students called me “ᄺྤ” (Sister Senior) instead of “teacher” in our daily contact. Such an appellation lessened the distance between the researcher and researched. On the other hand, in formal research sessions, such as performing communicative tasks, formal interviews and focus group discussions, especially in carrying out communicative tasks in a classroom setting, students would call me “teacher” to attract my attention. In other words, at that specific moment, they considered themselves more as students and the researcher as a teacher. The teacher’s role of the researcher was strengthened by the fact that the EFL teachers in Classes A and B sometimes asked me to help them to mark students’ exercise books and tests. Moreover, when they were away from the school, they sometimes asked me to take their place though I could teach the content of the lessons as I wished.21 However, the students’ perception of me as a teacher was different from their perceptions of their own teachers since I was not really part of 21

In all, I taught three lessons and none had anything to do with the students” English textbooks.

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the school structure. Technically speaking, I was not a formal teacher in this school, so they would tell me many things that had happened between their classmates and their teachers since they did not need to worry that I would pass on the information to a third party as I had promised them I would not do so. They also did not need to worry about the fact that if their behaviour was inappropriate, that I would judge them or mark them down in their examinations. They did not have all these kinds of worries which made them more prepared to talk freely to me. This also explained why they sometimes came to my office and talked to me but did not do so with their own teachers. Of course, it may be also related to the fact that I was their senior fellow apprentice, which made them feel close with me and treat me like an elder sister. Alongside the roles of being a senior fellow apprentice who was easy to approach and a teacher, students also treated me as a young female who was intelligent enough to pursue a PhD degree at the University of Cambridge. On the very first day of the fieldwork, the EFL teachers in Classes A and B introduced me to the students. When they mentioned that I was currently a PhD student from the University of Cambridge, all the students shouted out, because on the one hand, in their opinion I was too young-looking to be a PhD student and on the other hand, they had heard a lot about the university and some of them were really keen to go there. One thing that I had not anticipated and learnt later was that they were not particularly surprised to see a female PhD student because they were aware that many Chinese female students now chose to do PhD degrees. Although being a female PhD student did not cause students to treat me as alien, the fact of being a female researcher did affect the process of data collection when interacting with girls and boys. Firstly, it seems that female students behaved more freely than male students in both interviews and focus group discussions. This was observable when we were discussing issues related to gender, such as their favourite female and male characters in “Friends”. In the all-male focus group discussions, by contrast, it took more time for boys to become involved and to discuss issues in-depth. For instance, in one all-male focus group, after students had indicated their favourite female characters22, I asked them whether they knew any girls around them who behaved like the three female characters in the show. One boy replied promptly in a sensitive way: 22

In the focus group, after students had commented on the six main characters, they were asked who their favourite male and female character respectively was.

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“What are you driving at, teacher?”23, and all the other boys laughed. Realising that he thought I wanted to know who their favourite girls in the class were, which made him feel nervous, I replied that I only wanted to find out whether there were any girls who behaved like the girls in “Friends”. In addition, I told them that they could simply answer the question with “yes” or “no” if they preferred, that the girls they referred to did not need to be from their own class and there was no need to give the girls’ names. After this, the boy calmed down and all the other boys started to talk about their experience enthusiastically. Secondly and more importantly, as a female researcher, my own background and experience was bound to contribute gender bias to the research. To reduce this possible effect, during the interviews and group discussions, if I was unsure about my own understanding of what they said, I would seek students’ confirmation of my account. Moreover, I systematically asked students to clarify their statements through detailed examples of their own experiences. Thirdly, the way participants represented things to me might have been biased due to the fact that I am a female. To be specific, interviewees might not have said the same thing if I had been a male interviewer. They might have projected gender in different ways to me because I was female. In this case, when analysing the data, the triangulation that happens between the male and female researchers’ understanding of the data would strengthen the validity and reliability of the research. Moreover, students’ representations in the interviews could also be better interpreted. However, this idea was abandoned in consideration of the time and resource limitation, as well as the fact that this was never intended as a controlled experiment. In other words, I was not trying to measure gender differences which have been demonstrated time and time again.

4.4.4 Ethical issues in the research Ethical issues evolve over time with the researcher’s changing relationships with participants (Lipson 1994). It requires that the researcher remains sensitive to participants’ feelings and the potential risks to which they might be subjected to (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007).

23

Original Chinese “㗕ᏜԴᛇᑆ௯˛”; Literal translation “What do you want to do, teacher?”; Interpretation in context “What are you driving at teacher?”

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4.4.4.1 Ethical issue concerning the researcher’s multiple “hats” in relation to roles The friendly relationship between the researcher and the student participants, on the one hand, made students feel relaxed and behave in a natural way when taking part in the research; on the other hand, it could have given rise to ethical issues. The fact that I lived in the school and was the students’ senior fellow apprentice provided them with potential opportunities to act as “buddies” in a sense. There was a danger, particularly because of the research topic, that I might lead students to reveal things which they did not really want to reveal. Realising the ambiguous situation in terms of roles (see section 4.4.3), while developing a relationship with the students, I tried to maintain some professional distance from them, not only to permit adequate observation in the recordings, but also to respect them as free adolescents and to maintain my position as a participant researcher. In other words, being a qualitative researcher, more precisely a participant observer, and as a former student graduate of the school, I had to take into account the ethical aspects of my participation in the context of the school. Because I did not observe all of their classes nor did I attend all their weekly class meetings. As a result, on the whole, students were not as familiar with me as with their headteachers or EFL teachers who had more opportunities to get to know with them (see section 4.1 for the brief introduction of my contact with students in the research). 4.4.4.2 Informed consent Consent for taking part in the research was obtained from the school leaders, the teachers and the students. Taking into consideration of the school system and the sociocultural context, access was first obtained from the school leaders and teachers and then from the student participants, even though they were the main participants in the research. Since both interviews and focus group discussions were audio recorded, participants’ permission to be recorded was checked before each stage started. Because of the nature of the research topic, at the very beginning of the research, I did not tell the students that my focus was specifically on gender but that it was generally about their EFL learning. Although this was not untrue, I was “economical with the truth” at that stage. This was based on the following two considerations. Firstly, gender is too sensitive a topic to discuss with adolescents in China. If I had told them

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at the very beginning that my research focus was on their construction and negotiation of gender identity, students would have felt restrained or awkward in interviews and focus group discussions especially at the stage when I was not very familiar with them. Secondly, if I had told them that my focus was on gender, girls and boys might have behaved in an unnatural way in the research and modified their behaviour accordingly. In addition, I did not try to keep students ignorant of the actual focus of research for the whole time. As time went by, especially in the later stages of the research when students took part in discussions on “Friends” and the later interviews, they did know what my research focus was but in a way which was not threatening to them. When they felt threatened, they would send signals (see section 4.4.3) to which the researcher could respond accordingly. Moreover, permission regarding which information could be included in the PhD thesis and which information they wished to keep strictly “off the record” was negotiated with students. By checking all the time that I was in a sense renewing the agreement that I would not reveal private information, they could be protected from the consequences of information they regarded as confidential or harmful being published by the researcher (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007). In addition, at the early stage of the research, students were informed about the potential activities with which they would be involved in the following months, such as recording of their conversation, participation in several interviews during the research and involvement in focus group discussions. They were also informed that they had the right to withdraw from the research at any time if they wanted. Later on, when each session started, they were informed again about what they could have to do in the session and that their right to withdraw. In other words, “process consent” for taking part into each research activity was obtained from the participants throughout the research, which offers the opportunity to negotiate and changes arrangements (Munhall 1988). Most students were very cooperative, but there were several students who missed one or two sessions of the research because they were taking part in the National Physics Competition. Yet their contribution to participating in the research was still highly appreciated. 4.4.4.3 Issues of anonymity and confidentiality Confidentiality is a special concern in focus groups because the nature of the group session may elicit information more personal than the

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members had anticipated (Punch 1994). Hence, before the focus group began, participants were agreed that both the researcher and the members of the group should keep confidential all the information collected in the session and should not reveal anything about the discussion to other students outside the group. Students were informed at the very beginning of the research and before each research stage that data collected from them would be used for research purposes only and would be treated confidentially. Their names would not be published and their identity would in no way be revealed by information they provided. After the data (including tasks, interviews and focus group discussions) had been transcribed, the names of the participants were removed and students were referred to simply by Arabic numbers and the letter F, which stands for female, and M, which stands for male. Several other strategies were used to resolve the ethical dilemmas posed by the research. For example, in order to minimise the effect of my presence in the school, from the outset, I familiarised myself with the working systems of the school, such as the arrangement of daily teaching activity, the regulation and rules of the school to ensure appropriate behaviour. Similarly, the times chosen to conduct tasks, interviews and focus groups were negotiated with the teachers and students in advance to make sure their normal teaching and learning schedules were not disturbed. Another issue was that due to the time and resource limitations, as well as the nature of the research, not all students in Classes A and B could be involved in the research. As a result, I had to consider the feelings of the other students in these two classes, particularly for ethical reasons. To achieve this, I tried to make the other students feel they were important participants in the research, for example, by involving them in interviews, daily conversation and watching “Friends”.

4.4.5 Research validity and reliability Validity and reliability are crucial keys to both effective quantitative and qualitative research (see Cohen, et al. 2003: 105, 117). In the study, actions were taken to minimise invalidity and unreliability, in the process of both collecting and analysing data. Triangulation24 is a powerful way 24

In qualitative case work, the procedures of reducing the likelihood of misinterpretation by employing various procedures, including redundancy of data gathering and procedural challenges to explanations is called triangulation (Geotzand and LeCompte 1984; Denzin 1989).

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of demonstrating concurrent validity and reliability, particularly in qualitative research (Campbell and Fiske 1959). It has been generally considered as a process which uses multiple perceptions to clarify meaning, verifying the repeatability of an observation or interpretation. However, acknowledging that no observations or interpretations are perfectly repeatable, triangulation serves also to clarify meaning by identifying the different ways the phenomenon is being seen (Flick 1992). Several types of triangulation were conducted in the research. Firstly, data collected using different methods with the same group of students, including interviews (individual viewpoints), communicative tasks (communicative behaviour in discourse) and focus group discussions (collective viewpoints), were triangulated with each other in the process of data analysis and interpretation. Different research methods have their own advantages and disadvantages, hence by comparing data collected from them, the accuracy and authenticity of the data may be better ensured. For example, data collected from individual interviews may lead to bias and misleading pictures (Cohen, et al. 2003), but once they have been triangulated with data collected from the communicative tasks, the presentation and interpretation of the data will be more authentic25. Moreover, due to the effect of being in a group (see section 4.2.3), data collected from focus group discussions may sometimes not be sufficiently authentic. By combining the data collected from individual interviews, this problem may be solved to a certain extent. Secondly, daily conversation with students, teachers and leaders in the school community allowed its triangulation with the main datasets collected by means of formal observations, interviews and focus group discussions. This also helped to increase the validity and authenticity of the data. Thirdly, in order to minimise inaccurate interpretations of the data, when there were any confusing points that I did not understand, I would feed them back to the student or teacher participants to seek further explanation. This respondent validation (Bernard 1988; Morse 1994), namely, checking evolving interpretations of the data with students and other participants, helped to increase the validity of the 25

From a social constructionist perspective, many scholars (Guba and Lincoln 1989; Denzin and Lincoln 2000) use the word “authenticity””– the hallmark of trustworthy and rigorous inquiry – to address the particular nature of validity in qualitative data.

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researcher’s interpretation (also see section 4.4.3). In addition, observations, fieldnotes and research diaries were also investigated to capture the co-constructed interpretations of the researcher and other participants. At the later stage of the research, I gave students the chance to comment on how they had conducted all the research activities. This helped me to discover whether their discourse at that point was consistent with what was revealed by the data derived from observations, focus group discussions and interviews. Apart from triangulation, several other strategies were adopted to maximise the validity and reliability in data collection and analysis. Firstly, the major issue concerning validity when conducting observation concerns the observer effect (see Denscombe 2003:39). In this study, strategies were used to minimise the effect of the presence of the researcher as a participant observer and the recorder in order to help students to behave as naturally as possible (see sections 4.2.1.2 and 4.4.3). Secondly, other than the pilot studies which were carried out in advance of the PhD project, during the PhD fieldwork, all types of pilot studies were conducted to ensure the validity and reliability of the data, including the pilots of the communicative tasks, the focus group discussions and the use of the recording equipment (see section 4.2). Thirdly, the sociocultural approach to the research developed my sensitivity to the research context. In consideration of the fact that social interactions recorded on tapes only captured the language and could not provide a systematic record of paralinguistic cues and non-verbal interactions, such as gestures and gaze, fieldnotes were taken in interviews and group discussions to record these missed phenomena and the contextual information (see section 4.2). When it came to analysing the data, both macro-level contextual analysis and micro-level interactional analysis were conducted to ensure the best possible interpretation of the data (see section 4.3).

PART II: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This part consists of five chapters. Chapter 5 reports findings about students’ representations of “ideal” girls and boys in the Chinese community. Sections 5.1 and 5.2 depict girls’ and boys’ representations of ideal Chinese female and male characterisations respectively. Differences between girls and boys in accepting ways of performing gender are compared in section 5.3. Section 5.4 displays the influence of these constructed and negotiated gender representations on students’ choices of the class type (either science or arts class). Chapter 6 deals with students’ gender representations of English girls and boys. It not only portrays students’ constructed views about English girls and boys but also clarifies the source(s) of these representations. Chapter 7 discusses students’ reactions to those constructed gender representations in English countries. In section 7.1, reactions to unfamiliar ways of performing gender as claimed by students in discourse are reported. Advantages students came across in negotiating gender as English learners are discussed in section 7.2. Their behaviours enacted in communicative tasks as attempts to behave differently, namely, as English girls and boys are illustrated in section 7.3. Constraints reported by students in negotiating gender as language learners are explained in section 7.4. Section 7.5 discusses key sites students claimed for their negotiation of their gendered selves in English. Chapter 8 deals with findings about students’ identity negotiation between social roles as students learning English and gendered roles in context. It starts with general reports of students’ negotiation between these two social roles as reflected in their choice of task partners and in their willingness to act as group representatives, and ends with a study of four representative cases in the research. Educational and pedagogical discussion and implications of the research are explored in Chapter 9.

CHAPTER FIVE STUDENTS’ REPRESENTATIONS OF ‘IDEAL’ GIRLS AND BOYS IN THE CHINESE COMMUNITY

Data from both focus group discussions and individual interviews showed that students in the research had received and constructed strong and fixed cultural views about how to behave like an “ideal” girl or boy in the Chinese community. However, boys held more conservative views about the way ideal Chinese girls and boys should behave. The following two sources of data are used to unravel these idealised images: (1) students’ comments about the six main characters in the TV series “Friends”; (2) students’ accounts of the reasons for their choice to study in the science class or the arts class. For the purpose of convenience, the term “ideal Chinese girl/boy” was used in the book to refer to images to which students referred in discourse about behaving as an ideal girl/boy in the Chinese community. In addition, the two terms “(culturally) idealised gender norms” and “traditional Chinese gender norms” were used interchangeably to refer to the qualities students represented in discourse which ideal girls and boys in the Chinese community should possess and according to which they should behave as ideal Chinese girls/boys. They were qualities students received in the process of being socialised as girls/boys in Chinese society.

5.1 Ideal female characterisations In focus group discussions, students were asked to comment on the six main characters in “Friends” respectively, of whom three are female (Monica, Rachael and Phoebe) and three are male (Ross, Chandler and Joey). Later, they were asked to identify the one they liked most and the one they most wanted to be. Their comments and the reasons for their choice allow us to discover the characterisations of the ideal female and

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male images for the students.

5.1.1 Ideal female characterisations by girls As a whole, qualities girls in the research admired most in an “idealised” Chinese girl are “pretty”, “lovely”, “pure”, “kind-hearted”, “caring about the family” as well as “independent” but NOT “too strong” as a “big woman” or “super woman” might be. Twenty-two of the 28 girls in the research chose Rachael as their favourite female character. One of the most common reasons they gave was that Rachael was “pretty”, “lovely” and “pure”, which conforms to traditional cultural views about behaving as an “ideal” female in Chinese society. Typical examples are as follows: Original Chinese1 F2: ៥㾝ᕫϝϾҎЁཌྷ↨䕗ⓖ҂ ķˈ㗠Ϩ⡍߿ৃ⠅ĸˈ᠔ҹ᳔୰⃶ ཌྷDŽ

English translation F2: I think she is prettierķ than the other two, and she is very lovelyĸ, so I like her most.

F4: ៥㾝ᕫ Rachael ᕜⓖ҂Ĺˈᕜऩ 㒃ĺˈ‫خ‬џгᕜৃ⠅Ļˈ㱑✊ཌྷⱘ Ꮉ԰㛑࡯ϡᰃᕜᔎˈԚ៥䖬ᰃ᳔୰ ⃶ཌྷDŽ‫ڣ‬䙷Ͼ 0RQLFD៥ⳟࠄཌྷⱘ ᯊ‫׭‬ህ㾝ᕫཌྷᰃϔϾཇᔎҎļDŽজ ᛳ㾝᮴ᔶЁˈཌྷⱘय़࡯㽕↨ Rachael 㽕໮ϔ⚍DŽ

F4: I think Rachael is very prettyĹ, very pureĺ and lovelyĻ. Although her ability to work is not very good, I still like her the most. Like Monica, I have a feeling that she is a super womanļwho must suffer more pressure than Rachael (in daily life).

Excerpt 5-1 Both F2 and F4 in the above excerpt listed “pretty”, “lovely” and “pure” as justifications for their choice. F4 pointed out although Rachael was not good at work (she worked as a waitress in a café), she still liked her the most. In her opinion, women like Monica, who was labelled a “super woman”, would suffer more pressure than Rachael. In other words, for F4, the girl she admired most was the one who was “pretty”, “pure”, “lovely” and led an easy life. The phrase “super woman” is translated from the Chinese expression “ ཇ ᔎ Ҏ ”, which is an 1

In the book, shaded Chinese letters in excerpts are important expressions translated into shaded letters in English with corresponding numbers.

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appellation for women who devote themselves to their careers and achieve success in Chinese. 2 In a society that used to consider the woman’s role to be that of a housewife, the term “super woman”, on the one hand is a kind of affirmation of a female’s hard work in pursuing her career; on the other hand, it is used more negatively as a term which means the loss of tenderness in a woman. In a sense, the term refers to a polarisation between “culturally idealised women” with “career women”. Similar comments were found in several other students’ presentations. For example, F10 gave her reason for choosing Rachael as her favourite character as follows: Original Chinese 1R:˄”Friends”Ё˅Դ᳔୰⃶ⱘཇ⫳ᰃ 䇕˛ 2F10: ᳔୰⃶ⱘཇ⫳ᰃ Rachaelˈ಴Ў ཌྷⓖ҂ķˈৠᯊ៥ህᰃ↨䕗୰⃶ཌྷ䙷 ⾡㛑⣀ゟⱘĸᗻḐDŽৃ㛑 Monica 䙷⾡ ໻ཇҎĹⱘᔶ䈵៥㾝ᕫ㞾Ꮕ↨䕗䲒‫خ‬ 䍋ᴹˈডℷᛳ㾝བᵰᰃ Rachael ⱘ䆱 ৃ㛑… 3R: ᇣཇҎĺϔ⚍˛ Î4F10: ௃ˈԚᰃཌྷгϡᰃ໾䙷Ͼˈ ህᰃ㞾Ꮕгᕜമᔎⱘ䙷⾡DŽ៥㾝ᕫ䖭 Ͼᰃ⦄ҷᔧҷཇᗻᕜ䳔㽕ⱘDŽ 5R: 䎳Դ㞾ᏅⱘᗻḐ᥹䖥৫˛ 6F10: ≵ཌྷ䙷М≵㛥Ļˈ੉੉DŽཌྷ↨ 䕗᳝ᯊ‫↨ˈ׭‬བ䇈ッ੪ଵ௯ˈ៥ᛇ៥ ᑨ䆹≵䙷М㊳DŽ 7R: 䙷Դ᳔ᛇ៤Ўⱘᰃ䇕˛ 8F10: 䙷䖬ᰃ Rachael

English translation 1R: (In “Friends”) which female do you like best? 2F10: (My) favourite girl is Rachael, because she is prettyķ. Besides, I also like her ability to be independentĸ. It is maybe difficult for me to be a woman like Monica whose image is like a “BIG WOMAN”Ĺ. I feel that if it was Rachael, it might be… ((pausing)) 3R: More like a “little woman”ĺ? Î4F10: Yes, but she is not that (weak), she is strong as well. I think this is what modern females need 5R: Is it close to your own character? 6F10: (I am) not as gormlessĻ as her, hehe ((laugh)). She sometimes, for example, in serving the coffee, I think I can do better (than her). 7R: Then who do you want to be best? 8F10: Still Rachael

Excerpt 5-2 In the above excerpt from an interview, F10 listed two reasons for her admiration of Rachael, namely her beauty and her ability to be independent. By saying Rachael is independent, she refers to her 2

(Original Chinese) ཇᔎҎᰃᇍϧ⊼џϮᑊ㦋ᕫ៤ህⱘཇᗻⱘϔ⾡⿄੐, see http://baike.baidu.com/view/247328.htm.

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experience of trying to live independently without her parents’ financial support. As F10 declared in the focus group discussion, “I want to be Rachael. On the one hand, she is quite pretty; on the other hand, she experiences the process of growing up throughout the television show. Among the six characters, this growing-up process is embodied most apparently in her. Normally in the process of growing-up, you will think a lot and learn a lot.”3



Many other students in the research also mentioned that the scene when Rachael cut up all her credit cards to start a new life living on her own left them with a deep impression.4 In the excerpt, F10 used the term “BIG WOMAN” to describe Monica which is in contrast with the term “little woman”, namely “ᇣཇ Ҏ ” in Chinese. The term “little woman” is frequently used to characterise a female who is tender, soft, weak and need to be protected. These characteristics are culturally perceived as those that a traditional Chinese woman should possess. There are two meanings for “໻ཇҎ”. One is “women who have man-like characteristics”, the other is “women who hold feminist views. They look down upon men sometimes or even want to dominate and command the others”. In short, a woman who is labelled a “big woman” is normally regarded as “lacking in tenderness and too aggressive to make the men keep away from them.”5
In response to my question whether it was because she thought Rachael was more a “little woman” in turn3, F10 replied that “yes, but she is not that (weak), she is strong as well. I think this is what modern females need”. From this further explanation, we can see that in F10’s mind, an ideal female in modern Chinese society should neither be too strong, namely, a “big woman”, nor too weak as a traditional “little woman” might be. In the focus group discussion, F10 commented further, 3

(original Chinese) F10: “៥㳂ᛇᔧ Rachael. ϔᮍ䴶ཌྷᕜⓖ҂ˈ঺ϔᮍ䴶៥㾝 ᕫཌྷ೼䖭ϔ䚼⠛ᄤ䞠䛑ᰃϔϾ៤䭓ⱘ䖛⿟DŽ䖭݁ϾҎЁཌྷ䖭Ͼ䖛⿟᳔Ўᯢ ᰒDŽϔ㠀Ϟ៤䭓ⱘ䖛⿟ˈԴӮᛇᕜ໮ˈᄺࠄᕜ໮DŽ” 4 See Appendix F 5 (original Chinese)”໻ཇҎ”ᰃᇍཇҎⱘϔ⾡䆘ӋˈϢ”ᇣཇҎH”੠”ᇣ⬋Ҏ “ⳌᇍᑨDŽ໻ཇҎ䗮ᐌᰃᣛ䙷⾡ᗻḐ᳝⬋Ҏ⡍䋼, гᣛ䙷ѯ᳝ཇᴗЏНᗱᛇˈ ⵻ϡ䍋⬋Ҏⱘϔ䚼ߚཇҎDŽ⫮㟇୰⃶ᬃ䜡੠ੑҸҪҎDŽཌྷӀᕔᕔϡ໳⏽ᶨ㒚 㝏ˈᕔᕔ㉫ᵱ໻৊ˈᆍᯧᗑ⬹䑿Ўཇᗻ᠔⡍᳝ⱘᶨ㕢ˈ㗠Ϩ໾䖛ѝᔎད㚰ˈ ӮҸ⬋ҎᇍཌྷӀᭀ㗠䖰ПDŽhttp://baike.baidu.com/view/1079338.htm

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Chapter Five “At the end of this TV soap, Rachael becomes a quite successful woman in her career. However, she still keeps her naiveté/pureness in life. This differentiates her from Monica who is a perfectionist in everything, even in dealing with those trivial things in daily life. She is too eager to excel.”6

This rationalisations of F10’s preference for Rachael rather than Monica was shared by many of the girls in the research. Although the majority of girls did not choose Monica as their favourite female character, some of them stated that they would like to try the way Monica, a “strong woman”/ “big woman” behaves. As student F8 declared, “Monica is quite powerful and doughty, hehe. Females nowadays actually quite need the kind of temperament attached to a ‘super woman’.”7 The following excerpt from an interview with F6 echoes F8’s declaration: Original Chinese 1 R: “Friends”䞠᳔୰⃶䇕˛ 2F6: Rachaelˈ㾝ᕫཌྷ‫ڏ‬ТТⱘķˈᕜ ৃ⠅DŽ⫳⌏ᕜ䕏ᵒˈᕜ㟦᳡ˈ᮴ᖻ᮴ 㰥ⱘˈᕜ৥ᕔDŽԚᰃ៥䇈བᵰᛇ៤Ў ⱘ䆱ᰃ Monicaĸˈ಴Ў↨䕗⦄ᅲˈ㗠 Ϩ៥㾝ᕫ㳂᳝㛑࡯ⱘˈህᰃ໘⧚৘⾡ ᮍ䴶ⱘ䆱DŽ៥㾝ᕫབᵰ㽕⫳⌏ϟএⱘ 䆱ˈᖙ乏㽕‫݋‬໛‫ڣ‬ཌྷ䙷ḋⱘ㛑࡯

English translation 1 R: Who do you like best in “Friends”? 2F6: Rachael. She is simple-mindedķ, very cute. Her life is very easy and comfortable, nothing to be worried about. (I am) very attracted to it. But if you ask me who I want to become most, I would choose Monicaĸ Because it’s more realistic and I think (she is) quite competent at dealing with all kinds of things. I think if we want to survive (in society), (we) must have the ability that she (Monica) has.

Excerpt 5-3 The Chinese word that I translated into “simple-minded” is “‫ڏ‬ТТ ⱘ”. In Chinese, this word can be used both as a derogatory term equivalent to the term “foolish” and as having a commendatory meaning 6

(original Chinese) F10: “䖭䚼⠛ᄤ᳔ৢ Rachael ᳔ৢг៤Ў↨䕗៤ࡳⱘ㘠Ϯ ཇᗻˈԚཌྷ೼⫳⌏Ёҡ✊ֱᣕⴔཌྷⱘ㒃ⳳDŽ䖭䎳 Monica ᕜϡϔḋDŽཌྷད‫ڣ‬ ҔМџᚙ䛑㽕‫خ‬ᕫᕜདˈાᗩᰃϔѯ⧤⹢ⱘ᮹ᐌᇣџDŽཌྷᗻḐ໾㽕ᔎњDŽ” 7 (original Chinese) F8: “Monica ↨䕗ᔎᙡ, ੉੉DŽཇ⫳݊ᅲ⦄೼㳂䳔㽕䖭⾡ ཇᔎҎⱘ⇨䋼ⱘDŽ”

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which is equivalent to the term “pure”. In this excerpt, F6 used it in the more complimentary sense according to her following comment about Rachael and her eagerness to lead a life like hers. She stated here that Rachael was her favourite female character in “Friends” because she was simple-minded/pure, lovely and leads a very free and easy life. However, Monica was the one she wanted most to become because her life was more realistic. If girls wanted to survive in society, they had to possess the ability Monica had—the ability to deal with all kinds of things competently. In other words, in F6’s view, the characteristics she admired most in an idealised Chinese girl were not sufficient for girls to survive in modern Chinese society. A similar declaration is displayed in the excerpt below from a female-male mixed group discussion: Original Chinese 1R: 䙷བᵰৃҹ䗝ᢽ䆱ˈԴᏠᳯ៤Ў 䇕˛䖭ϝϾҎᔧЁ 2F23: ៥ᛇ៤Ў Monica ˄ ˄݊ҪҎ ュ˅ ˅ 3F1: Դϡᰃ䇈Դফϡњ৫˛˄ ˄݊Ҫ Ҏュ˅ ˅ 4F23: ಴Ўা᳝䖭⾡Ҏᠡ㛑⫳⌏ϟএ ķ.

English translation 1R: If you can choose, who do you want to become, among the three characters? 2F23: I want to become Monica ((the other students laugh)) 3F1: Didn’t you say that you cannot bear her? ((the other students laugh)) 4F23: Because only people like her can survive (in society) ķ.

Excerpt 5-4 In the above excerpt, F23 chose Monica as the one she would most like to be because she reckoned only people like Monica can survive in society. In other words, she realised there was a distance between the “idealised” female image and the image that is more suitable for real life. More debates on being a “strong woman” are shown in the following excerpt from an all-female focus group discussion.

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Original Chinese 1F10: ៥㾝ᕫཇᄽᄤ䖬ᰃᑨ䆹㽕↨䕗 ᔎϔ⚍↨䕗དDŽ 2F8: ᔎϔ⚍= Î3F15: =៥㾝ᕫ䖭ϾԴ㽕ḍ᥂ϡৠ ⱘᯊᳳ䖭Ͼ㽕বⱘDŽབᵰҹৢ៥Ӏℹ ܹ⼒Ӯⱘ䆱ˈཇᄽᄤⳳⱘᑨ䆹㽕ᄺᕫ ᔎϔ⚍ˈϡӮৗѣDŽ⦄೼ⱘ䆱‫צ‬᮴᠔ 䇧DŽ⦄೼া㽕ᄺдᄺᕫདDŽ Î4F9: ៥㾝ᕫཇᄽᄤ䖬ᰃ㽕ᔎϔ⚍ ↨䕗དˈ៥Ϟ⃵ⳟњѢЍ䇈ⱘˈ᮶㽕 മᔎԚজϡ㽕༅ᇣཇҎⱘᚙ㒾DŽ˄ ˄݊ ҪҎϔ䍋ュ˅ ˅ 5R: ߮ᶨᑊ⌢ķDŽ໻ᆊᰃ৺ৠᛣ䖭Ͼ 㾖⚍˛((䴶৥݊Ҫᄺ⫳)) 6Others: ᇍ! ৠᛣ!

English translation 1F10: I think it is better for girls to become stronger. 2F8: Stronger= Î3F15: = I think it varies according to the different stages we are at. When we enter society later (after graduating from the university), (we) girls really need to learn to be stronger in order not to be positioned in a disadvantageous situation. Currently, I do not think it matters. We only need to study well at present. Î5F9: I think girls should be much stronger. Last time, I listened to Yu Dan’s lecture, she said we must be strong but at the same time we should not lose the emotion and spirits a ‘little woman’ should have ((the other girls laugh together in a knowing manner)) 5R: Strength and tenderness are married ķ. Do you agree with this idea? ((facing the other girls)) 6Others: YES! Agree!

Excerpt 5-5 In the excerpt, F15 distinguished in discourse her self-positioning between being a student in the school context and being an adult female working in society. In her opinion, girls’ main social role at school at present was that of a “student”. The major task for them was to study hard and there was no need to consider the issue of learning to become a strong woman. It is only after graduating from the school and entering society that they had to learn to be stronger to survive in a society full of competition. In other words, F15 aligned herself more with the aspect of being a student than that of being a female in the school context. In fact, she integrated the two social roles of being a good girl and being a good student in the school. She once pointed out in the interview, “I don’t think girls should behave one way and boys should behave another. But there are some rules and regulations that are very necessary.

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As a student, you have to obey these rules and regulations. For example, being a student, you should go to school in school uniforms. You should be like a lamb who attends the class obediently. As a good girl, you should not get your ears pierced. Being a student, you should not follow fashion. You should be frugal. Do what a student should do. That’s all you should do.”8

For F15, being a good student not only meant you should attend the class obediently but also that you should wear school uniform and be frugal instead of dressing fashionably. In other words, being a good girl equals being a good student in the school. Such a clear and simplified distinction between these two social roles, on the one hand caused F15 difficulty in accessing the peer network (see section 7.4.2). On the other hand, it did not conform to F15’s actual behaviour when working with male students in the research (see section 8.2.2). In contrast, it seems that the other girls in the group did not separate out their roles as students and as females so clearly. In response to F15’s statement, F9 quoted Yu Dan’s speech, one of the most famous female scholars researching Confucianism in China, to demonstrate her viewpoint, “We must be strong but meanwhile we should not lose the emotion and spirits a ‘little woman’ should have.” On hearing this statement, all the other girls laughed in a knowing manner. From the emphasis and raised volume in answering “YES!” in turn 6, we can conclude that girls in the group agreed that an “ideal” female in modern society should combine strength and tenderness in herself. This viewpoint was agreed upon by other girls in the research as evidenced by their statements in other focus group discussions (see excerpt 5-9 as another example). Apart from the 22 girls who chose Rachael as their favourite female character, three of the remaining 6 girls chose Phoebe as the one they liked most and the other 3 selected Monica. The common reason girls gave for choosing Phoebe as their favourite was because they thought she was very “optimistic” and “pure”9.

For example, F2 said in a group 8 (original Chinese) F15: “៥ϡ㾝ᕫཇ⫳ህᕫᗢМ‫⫳⬋ˈخ‬ህᕫϡᗢМ‫خ‬DŽԚ ᰃ݊ᅲ᳝ᕜ໮ᴵᴵḚḚᰃᕜᖙ㽕ⱘDŽԴ԰ЎϔϾᄺ⫳ˈԴ㽕䙉ᕾϡৠⱘᴵᴵ ḚḚDŽህ↨བԴ԰ЎϔϾᄺ⫳ህᑨ䆹㽕ЪЪᎻᎻഄこⴔ᷵᳡ଞˈЪЪഄএϞ 䇒ଞ. ЪᎻ⚍ⱘཇ⫳Դህϡᑨ䆹᳝㘇⋲ଞ䖭ѯDŽԴϡᑨ䆹໾䗑∖ᯊᇮˈԴህ ᑨ䆹ᴈ㋴ϔ⚍ˈሑԴᄺ⫳ⱘ㘠䋷ህདDŽ” 9 (Original Chinese) F2: “៥䆆៥㞾Ꮕ᳔୰⃶ⱘ Phoebe. ཌྷད‫ࠄ⺄ڣ‬ད໮ೄ 䲒ˈԚᛳ㾝ཌྷ䍙㑻Ф㾖ⱘDŽ”

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discussion, “I will talk about the one that I love best, Phoebe. It seems that she met lots of difficulties, but still she is really optimistic.” The shared reason for girls choosing Monica as their favourite was because they thought she was a very competent housewife who took care of the family well. F14 stated in the group discussion, “I think if they are a family, she (Monica) will be the master who is in charge of everything. She often cooks for the family, like the Thanksgiving dinner, the Christmas dinner. She is very kind-hearted and loves her family a lot.”10 In this respect, we can see that the reason for girls choosing Monica as their favourite was not because of her success in her career, her masculine characteristics in dealing with things, but because of her kind-heartedness in taking care of the family, in loving the family members. This is in fact one of the most important traditional qualities that girls in China are socialised into possessing. To sum up, no matter which female character girls chose as their favourite, the qualities they admired were “pretty”, “lovely”, “pure”, “kind-hearted” and “caring about the family”.


5.1.1 Ideal female characterisations by boys As a whole, the qualities an ideal Chinese girl should possess, as claimed by boys in the research, included being “pretty”, “pure”, “lovely”, “weak” and “needing to be protected”. Only two out of the 26 boys chose Phoebe as their favourite female character, while the other 24 took Rachael as their favourite. Their main reason was that Rachael was “pretty”, “pure”, “cute”, “lovely” and “in need of protection”. As explained by M2, “Rachael gives me the impression that she is like a small bird that needs to be protected. Although sometimes she looks a little bit simple-minded, she is pure and cute.”11
M4 also stated, “I like Rachael best. She is pretty. Although she is a little simple-minded and incapable, but I don’t think it matters.”12
Both M2 and M4 considered that Rachael’s beauty outweighed her incapability. In a sense, the 10

(Original Chinese) F14: “៥㾝ᕫҪӀ㽕ᰃϔᆊᄤⱘ䆱ˈཌྷ˄Monica˅Ӯᰃ 䙷ϾЏҎˈᥠㅵϔߛDŽཌྷ㒣ᐌ㒭ᆊ䞠‫خ‬佁ˈ‫ڣ‬ᛳᘽ㡖ᰮ令଺ˈ೷䆲㡖ᰮ令଺DŽ ཌྷᕜ᳝⠅ᖗⱘˈᕜ⠅㞾ᏅⱘᆊҎDŽ” 11 (Original Chinese) M2: “Rachael ᳝ϔ⾡ᇣ右ձҎⱘᛳ㾝ˈ䳔㽕Ҏএֱᡸˈ 㱑✊᳝ᯊ‫׭‬᳝⚍‫ڏ‬ТТⱘˈԚᕜ㒃ⳳৃ⠅DŽ” 12 (Original Chinese) M4: “៥᳔୰⃶ Rachael.ཌྷᕜⓖ҂ 㱑✊ཌྷ᳝⚍ーーⱘˈ Ԛ䖭ḋгᤎདⱘDŽ”

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incapability made Rachael appear to be weak and in need of protection which added scores onto boys’ impressions of her. Another example comes from an excerpt from an all-male group discussion:
Original Chinese 1R: 䙷䖭ϝϾཇ⫳ЁԴӀ᳔୰⃶ાϾ ཇ⫳˛ 2M25: [Phoebe 3Others: [RACHAEL! ((䷇䞣ᕜ催)) 4R: Դ↨䕗୰⃶ Phoebe, ԴӀ↨䕗୰ ⃶ Rachael, 㛑䇈ϔϟॳ಴৫˛ Î5M25: 䖭Ͼ↨䕗㒃⋕ķ// 6Others: 䙷Ͼ᳈ 䙷Ͼ᳈㒃! Î7M25: ໽ⳳĸ// 8Others: 䙷Ͼ᳈ ໽ⳳˈ᳈ৃ⠅ ((‫ݡ‬ 䙷Ͼ᳈໽ⳳˈ᳈ ⃵ᡶ䆱)) Î9M25: ϡ䖛䖭Ͼ᳈ⓖ҂Ĺϔ⚍˛ ˄䰡䇗ˈᢝ䭓ໄ 10M13:Ęϡᰃ৻ ϡᰃ৻˛˄ ϡᰃ৻ ䷇˅ ˅ 11R: ᠔ҹԴӀ޴Ͼᰃ↨䕗୰⃶ Rachael ϔ⚍ˈԴਸ਼↨䕗୰⃶ Phoebe ϔ⚍DŽԚᰃ≵᳝ϔϾҎ୰⃶ Monica ⱘ˛ ˄ ˄ᕜ㚃ᅮⱘ䇁⇨˅˅ 12All: ௃ʽ

English Translation 1R: Among the three females, who do you like best? 2M25: [Phoebe 3Others: [RACHAEL! ((in a high volume)) 4R: You like Phoebe better, and you like Rachael more. Can you tell me the reasons? Î5M25: This one (Phoebe) is quite pure ķ// 6Others: THAT ONE (Rachael) IS PURER! Î7M25: (Phoebe is) innocentĸ// ((interrupting again)) 8Others: THAT ONE (Rachael) IS MORE INNOCENT AND LOVELIER. Î9M20: But this one (Phoebe) is prettierĹ? 10M13: ĘDo you REALLY mean it? ((in a falling tone and prolonged manner)) 11R: So you like Rachael more and you like Phoebe better. But there is no one who likes Monica? 12All: YES! ((in a really affirmative tone))

Excerpt 5-6 In this excerpt, each time when M25 stated his reason for choosing Phoebe as his favourite female character, the other boys interrupted him abruptly by questioning his aesthetic taste in strongly interrogative tones with a very raised volume, for example, the expression “PURER” in turn 6, “MORE INNOCENT AND LOVELIER” in turn 8 and “ĘDo you REALLY mean it?” in turn 10. The emphasis of adverbs “MORE”

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and “REALLY” clearly marked in linguistic terms that they strongly disagreed with M25’s justifications. Nevertheless, the debate among the boys reveals that the principle standards boys used to select their favourite female character were the same, namely “pure”, “innocent” and “pretty”. What they disagreed about was who was purer, prettier and more innocent. The same standards were shared by the other male participants in the research. The two boys who chose Phoebe as their favourite shared the same reason for their choice, namely, that she was the purest and most lovely girl in “Friends”. None of the boys in the research chose Monica as their favourite. The phrases they used to describe Monica revealed the reason. They were “ᔎᙡ” (powerful and doughty), “ᔎ⹀” (tough), “㽕ᔎ” (eager to excel), “໻ྤ໻” (big /supreme sister)13, “⋐䕷” (bold and vigorous) and “ᔎໂ” (strong). All these features are the opposite of the traditional Chinese cultural ideas regarding an ideal woman’s behaviour. Boys in discourse displayed strong resistance towards women having these features in discourse. For example: Original Chinese 1R: ԴӀᇍ Monica 䖭Ͼཇ⫳ᘏԧ᳝ ҔМॄ䈵˛ 2Several: ↨䕗᳝ഄԡϔ⚍DŽ໻ྤ໻ķ. 3M14: Ёᖗĸˈཌྷད‫ڣ‬ᰃ䖭Ͼᆊᒁⱘ Ёᖗ ЁᖗDŽ 4M22: ೈ㒩ཌྷⱘ, ↨䕗ᔎˈཇᔎҎ ཇᔎҎʽ ཇᔎҎ Ĺ 5R: ԴӀ୰⃶䖭ḋᗻḐⱘཇ⫳৫˛ Î6All: ϡ୰⃶ʽĺ˄ ˄ᦤ催䷇䞣˅ ˅ ϡ୰⃶ 7M22: ໾ᔎໂњˈ੉੉DŽ 8R: ԴӀ䛑ϡ୰⃶˛ Î9M12: བᵰཇ⫳໾㛑ᑆⱘ䆱ˈ䙷⬋ ⫳ህᑆϡњҔМĻ˄ ˄݊ҪҎϔ䍋ュ˅ ˅

English Translation 1R: What impression do you have of Monica as a whole? 2Several: It seems that she has a high standing among them. Supreme Sister ķ. 3M14: THE PILLARĸ. It seems that she is the pillar of the family. 4M22: (All the others) around her. Quite strong, SUPER WOMAN!Ĺ 5R: Do you like girls who are like her? Î6All: NO!ĺ ((volume raised)) 7M22: She is too strong, hehe. 8R: None of you like her? Î9M12: If girls are too capable, we boys can do nothingĻ ((all the others laugh together in a knowing manner)) manner))

Excerpt 5-7 13

In Chinese, “big / supreme sister” shares the similar meaning with “big woman” and “super woman” discussed in section 5.1.1

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The unanimous claim “NO!” in turn 6 with raised volume displays boys’ strong dislike of “super women” like Monica who was “strong” and “capable” and played a central role in the family. As claimed by M12, “If girls are too capable, we boys can do nothing”. In other words, M12 liked girls who were less capable in order to make himself appear capable in contrast. This remark made the other boys laugh in a knowing manner in the group. It also found echoes in other groups (see Appendix G-2).

5.2 Ideal male characterisations Almost all female and male students in the research showed their disapproval of the three male characters in “Friends” because in their opinion none of them had displayed significant masculine characteristics, especially the one named Ross. The most common words students used to describe Ross in the research were “feminine”, “womanish” and “sissy” which were translated from the original Chinese “ཇᗻ࣪” and “࿬࿬㜨”14. For instance, F12 commented in interview, “I don’t like these three male characters. I mean, if they are in the TV series, it is ok, I can accept them. But if it is in real life, I cannot bear them. Especially Ross, he is too feminine.”15

When F12 was asked to define what she meant by “feminine” in interview, she stated that “he (Ross) is too meticulous and careful sometimes. You know, sometimes, it may be good, he may be patient but, you know, if it’s too meticulous, it will make him quite feminine.”16 In other words, “meticulous” is treated as a quality which improves the image of females while degrading males’. Similar comments were found in the following excerpt from a focus group discussion.

14

“ཇᗻ࣪” can be literally translated into “behaving like a woman” and “࿬࿬ 㜨”can be literally translated into “speaking in a woman-like tone”. 15 (Original Chinese) F12: “䞠䴶ϝϾ៥䛑ϡ୰⃶DŽ៥ᰃ䇈བᵰᰃ೼⬉㾚࠻䞠 ߎ⦄ˈ䙷៥ৃҹ᥹ফˈԚ⦄ᅲ⫳⌏Ё៥ӮফϡњཌྷӀˈᇸ݊ᰃ RossˈҪ໾ ཇᗻ࣪њDŽ” 16 (Original Chinese) F12: “Ҫ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬г໾㒚㟈њDŽ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬㒚㟈ৃ㛑དⱘˈ↨ 䕗㗤ᖗˈԚ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬໾㒚њˈህᰒᕫ↨䕗ཇᗻ࣪DŽ”

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Original Chinese 1R: ԴӀ㾝ᕫ Ross ᰃϔϾᗢМḋⱘ Ҏ? 2F2: ᕜᇣᄽᄤ⇨ķ 3F4: ᳝⚍ཇᗻ࣪ĸ 4R: 䖬᳝৫˛ 5M2: ᝼᝼ⱘĹˈ䗖ড়ⓨ៣࠻ Î6F26: ៥㾝ᕫ⬉㾚䞠ⳟࠄ䖭ḋ⬋ⱘ 䖬དˈབᵰ⦄ᅲЁϔϾ⬋ᕫ䖭ḋ䙷໾ ᘤᗪњ ((ϔ䍋໻ュ)) 7R: ԴӀӮ㾝ᕫ᥹ফϡњ? Î8Fs: ᇍᇍᇍ ((ᖿ䗳ಲㄨ))

English Translation 1R: What kind of person do you think Ross is? 2F2: Childishķ 3F4: A little bit womanishĸ. 4R: Anything else? 5M2: Simple and honestĹ, suitable for acting in a play. Î6F26: I think it is OK for us to see such a man on TV show, but if it is in real life, it’s too horrible for a man behave like that ((all the others laugh together)) 7R: You cannot accept that (in real life)? Î8Fs: Yes, yes, yes ((answered in a speeded up rhythm))

Excerpt 5-8 In the above excerpt, students used the word “childish”, “womanish” and “simple and honest” to depict Ross. F26 shared a similar viewpoint to that of F12 that she could only accept boys like Ross in television shows and it would be too horrible to meet men like that in real life. All the females showed their agreement with F26 by replying to my question in a speeded up rhythm “yes, yes, yes” in turn 8. Later on, M1 in this focus group claimed, “In my opinion, a man should look like a man, be firm and powerful. He (Ross) is too cowardly sometimes.”17 This declaration won wide support from other students in the research (see Appendix H for more comments about Ross). To sum up, both female and male students in the research held the views that an ideal Chinese male should display aspects of masculinity which include being “firm”, “powerful”, “mature” and “capable” but never “womanish”.

17

(Original Chinese) M1: “៥㾝ᕫ⬋⫳ᑨ䆹㽕⿡ᖂ᳝⚍⬋⫳ḋᄤˈ㽕䰇߮⇨ ϔ⚍DŽҪ(Ross)᳝ᯊ‫׭‬໾ឺᔅњDŽ”

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5.3 Acceptable ways of performing gender: girls’ and boys’ differential views Data from focus group discussions and interviews reported so far demonstrate that, on the one hand, girls and boys have presented certain similar standards with regard to “idealised” female and male behaviours that conform to the traditional cultural views18 they have received and constructed during the socialisation process. However, on the whole, it seems that boys presented in discourse more conservative and fixed views about girls’ and boys’ ideal behaviour in community. Female students in the research achieved agreement in focus group discussions that idealised girls nowadays should not lose “the emotions and spirits a ‘little woman’ should have” but at the same time should become “stronger” (see section 5.1.1). In contrast, all boys in the research showed their preference for girls who are “weak” and “in need of protection”. The EFL teacher in Class A told a story in interview that also evidenced this difference in perspective between girls and boys. It was about students’ experience of doing a reading comprehension in the EFL class. The passage discussed the income of females and males and the divorce rate in modern society. One of the news items in the passage reported that there were more female than male millionaires aged from 18 to 35 in the UK. This news gave rise to fierce debates between girls and boys in the class. Girls thought it was really exciting news and kept saying, “How wonderful it is!” while boys argued that it was not good for girls nowadays become too “strong” and lose the personality that an ideal girl should have. They, in a sense, considered the notion of “being a successful career woman” and “being an ideal woman in the life” to be incompatible. The following excerpt from a mixed focus group discussion19 was further proof of the difference between girls and boys in accepting ways of performing gender. It was developed from their comments about the female character “Monica” in “Friends”. 18

“The traditional cultural views” refer to the views that “an ideal Chinese girl should be “pretty”, “lovely”, “cute”, “pure”, “caring about the family”, “weak and needing to be protected”, while an ideal Chinese boy should behave “like a man”, be “firm”, “powerful” and “capable”. 19 “Mixed focus group discussion” refers to focus group discussion that involves both girls and boys.

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Original Chinese 1M2: བᵰཇ⫳䈵 Monica ϔḋг໾ᘤ ᘤ ᗪķњʽ 2R: 㛑ϡ㛑䇈ϔϟЎҔМଞ˛ 3M2: ϛϔ៥ҹৢⱘ㗕ယᰃ䖭ḋⱘ 䆱ˈ䙷г໾ᚆᚼ ໾ᚆᚼĸњ৻ˈཌྷ䙷М 䙷М䞢 ໾ᚆᚼ 䙷М䞢Ĺ ݊ҪҎュ ˈᗢМᖡফϟএଞʽĺ 4M1: ᰃᤎᘤᗪⱘʽĻ 5F1: ៥㾝ᕫ䖬ৃҹଞˈཌྷᗻḐ↨䕗䈾 ⠑৻ˈ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬䆩䆩ཌྷ䖭ḋгᑨ䆹䖬དˈ া㽕ϡ㽕໾䖛ህདļDŽ 6F2: ៥г㾝ᕫᤎདⱘDŽ Î7F3: ៥↨䕗୰⃶߿ⱘཇ⫳䖭ḋˈԚ ᰃ៥᥹ফϡњ៥㞾Ꮕ䖭ḋˈ੉੉DŽህ ᰃ߿ⱘཇ⫳䖭ḋ៥ӮᕜФᛣএ᥹㾺䖭 ϾҎˈ੠ཌྷѸ᳟টⱘDŽ

English Translation 1M2: Girls like Monica are TOO HORRIBLEķ ķʽ 2R: Can you explain why? 3M2: If my future wife was like her, that’s TOO MISERABLEĸ. She is SO:: UNCONSTRAINEDĹ ((others laughing on hearing this comment). How can we stand her!ĺ 4M1: It is horrible!Ļ 5F1: I think she is ok. She is quite straightforward. I think it is ok for us to try the way she did sometimes. It’s fine, if we do not overdo itļ. 6F2: I agree. Î7F3: I appreciate other girls behaving like her, but I cannot stand myself behaving like that, hehe. I mean if it is other girls who behave like her, I am happy to know her and be her friend.

Excerpt 5-9 The expressions “TOO HORRIBLE” in turn 1, “TOO MISERABLE” and “How can we stand her!” in turn 2 and “It is horrible!” in turn 3 revealed M1 and M2’s intolerant attitudes towards Monica’s behaviour. In the discussion, M2 used the word “䞢” which I translated into “SO:: UNCONSTRAINED” in turn 3 to describe Monica. In Chinese, this word involves strong personal emotions. It can be used to qualify both male and female behaviour. Normally, if people use this word to describe a boy, it means that he is “rude”, “impolite” or “violent”. When we say a girl is “䞢”, it denotes that the girl is perceived as “ambitious” or “unconstrained in behaviour”, which has the opposite meaning to terms such as “graceful” and “constrained”20. When M2 said the word “䞢” emphatically with raised volume and a high-pitched voice, all the other students in the group laughed because of the strong personal 20

The Xinhua dictionary is one of the most authoritative Chinese dictionaries in China. The explanation of the Chinese word in the book is based on the explanations listed in this dictionary. See the following website for a detailed explanation of the word “䞢”: http://xh.5156edu.com/html3/18565.html.

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feelings attached to the expression. It is the lexical choice and paralinguistic features that revealed M2’s strong emotions. In response to M1 and M2’s comments, F1 showed her willingness to try out Monica’s way of behaviour sometimes. In her opinion, Monica was “straightforward” and it was ok for girls to behave in that way as long as they did not “overdo” it. In other words, women who walked between the lines of being “a culturally idealised woman” and being a “straightforward” but not too “strong” woman were acceptable to F1. F2 agreed with this claim in turn 6, which showed that both F1 and F2 tended to resist in discourse the kind of projected gender identity attached to traditional culture, which was imposed on them through the process of socialisation. F3’s claimed response was slightly different from those of F1 and F2. Her discourse showed that she did not reject, but appreciated, the way Monica behaved. Nonetheless, she could not accept behaving in that way herself. In other words, she was afraid of breaking the traditional norms of the ideal female received through socialisation, though she accepted the different ways in which girls might behave. In spite of this, as a whole, girls were more tolerant and flexible about the way girls behave. Boys’ discourse in the research not only provided evidence of them having fixed views about behaving as ideal girls in society but also about that of ideal boys. When they were asked the question about whom they most wanted to be (of the three male characters in “Friends”) if they could choose, all of them answered in a very determined way that they would not like to become any of them and would rather be themselves. In contrast with the relatively tolerant attitude towards different ways of behaving as girls, female students in the research exhibited more conservative attitudes towards male behaviour. None of the three male characters conformed to their ideal male images and they insisted that they agreed that a boy should “behave like a man” (see section 5.2). However, they still listed some of the male characters’ good qualities. For instance, some girls mentioned that although Ross was a little bit womanish, he took responsibility for his family and was considerate to his wife. Moreover, he had a sense of humour and possessed a high academic qualification (see Appendix H). Traditional Chinese culture emphasises the authority of males and assigns females a secondary and subordinate status. The phenomenon that girls were more tolerant of the way females behave than the way males behave, on the one hand, showed that they still felt that the male role should take pride of place and they had stricter standards for males’ behaviour; on the other hand, it

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also showed the development of society in the course of history has provided students with a relatively open environment in which to behave in comparison that of the past. The relationship between the social and individual should be dialectic. It is a simplistic view to look at “the individual as the source of freedom and creativity and the social as the source of constraints and limitations, and vice versa” (Wenger 1998:146). In the research, students not only revealed in discourse the influence of those culturally idealised gender norms on their construction of gender roles and behaviours, but also mentioned the change in social attitude towards gender from a very conservative one to a more open one. They said in the interview that compared to girls and boys “in old times”, they are less constrained and the distance between girls and boys was closer than it used to be. For example, Original Chinese 1M13: ⦄೼⬋ཇ⫳П䯈䎱⾏≵ҹࠡ 䖰DŽҹࠡⱘ䆱⼒Ӯ↨䕗ֱᅜˈ‫ڣ‬៥Ӏ ⠊↡ⱘ䆱䖭ϔ䕜ህ↨䕗೼ᛣˈԚᰃ⦄ ೼⬉㾚⬉ᕅ䞠ህ㸼⦄ഄ↨䕗ᓔᬒ௯ˈ ᕜ໮䛑‫׳‬䡈㽓ᮍⱘ௯ˈ✊ৢህ㞾✊㗠 ✊ഄ᥹ফњDŽ 2R: ᠔ҹԴ㾝ᕫ໪ᴹ䖭ѯ᭛࣪䖬ᰃ᳝ ᕅડⱘ˛ 3M13: ௃ˈ䖬ᰃ᳝↨䕗໻ⱘᕅડDŽ‫ڣ‬ ⦄೼⬉㾚࠻ˈᕜ໮Ё೑ҎϡⳟЁ೑⬉ 㾚࠻ˈ䛑୰⃶ⳟ೑໪ⱘᕅ⠛DŽ⦄೼᳝ ϔѯཇ⫳ᕜᓔᬒᡞˈϡ䖛䖬ᰃ᳝ϔѯ ᕜֱᅜˈ‫ڣ‬䖛এⱘ䙷⾡໻ᆊ䯎⾔ଞˈ ੠߿Ҏ᥹㾺ᕜᇥDŽ

Excerpt 5-10

English Translation 1M13: The distance between girls and boys is not as wide as it used to be. In the past, society was quite conservative, like the generation of our parents. But now what we have seen on the TV and movies are also quite open. (The society) takes the Western world as its reference for many things. As time goes by we will accept it as natural. 2R: So you think foreign culture has influenced us? 3M13: Yes, quite a big influence. For example, a lot people in China nowadays don’t watch Chinese TV series since they prefer to watch foreign movies. Nowadays there are some girls who are quite open. But still there are some girls who are quite conservative, like the elegant beauties in the past who are quite reserved.

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In the above excerpt, M13 first took the reduced distance between girls and boys as one example of the development of present-day Chinese society as one which is more open-minded compared to that of the past with regard to the gender issue. He attributed the reason for the changed distance between girls and boys to the influences of foreign cultures that had been imported into China. Then he cited people’s selection of television programmes as an example to prove the influence. On the whole, with the development of society, students felt they have more chances either to make contact with foreigners face to face or to learn about the ways they behaved through all kinds of media. With the broadening of their horizons, students’ own minds have become more open and it is easier for them to accept different ways of gender behaviour although they may not be their favourite ones. Their risks of being excluded by the members of the mainstream social community are also decreased compared to those of the students in the past. This may be one of the reasons why girls exhibited a tolerant attitude towards different ways of behaving as girls in the research although they themselves may not behave in that way, and why they held the view that “an ideal female in modern society should combine strength and tenderness in herself” (see section 5.1.1). What we have displayed so far was students’ discursive representation of ideal gender characterisations and their alleged responses to the received cultural views about idealised gender norms in the Chinese community. Whether their actual performance in interactions conformed to their claims will be examined in detail in Chapters 7 and 8 of the book. Boys received more restricted behavioural requirements than girls from both girls and boys. Whether such a phenomenon affects their behaviour and awareness of using English and the EFL class to improve their gender awareness and performance will be further investigated in the following chapters. The section below illustrates one aspect of the influences, namely, how culturally idealised gender norms influence students’ choice of subjects in relation to different types of class (i.e. arts class and science class).

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5.4 The influence of culturally idealised gender norms on students’ choice of either science or arts classes Both students from the science and arts classes were involved in the research 21 . Data collected from interviews regarding their attitudes towards, and their own choice of, different types of class proclaimed that, on the one hand, students certainly exhibited fixed cultural views about idealised gender images; on the other hand, these received and constructed idealised gender norms influenced their views about, and choices of, either science or arts classes. Moreover, on the whole, boys were more constrained by these culturally idealised gender norms in terms of making choices. There is a widespread saying in Chinese society that it is better and more suitable for girls to study in arts classes and boys to study in science classes. This is in fact not only a Chinese situation but worldwide one. Arnot, et al. (1998:37) once reported that in UK schools, science, mathematics, technology, IT and PE are rated as “masculine” by pupils and preferred by boys; English, humanities, music, PSE and RE are rated as “feminine” and preferred by girls. Later Arnot (2002:1) argues that the curriculum embodies and reproduces the concept of gender codes and the formulation of gender identities. As stated by MacDonald (1995:37), “the transference of femininity, for example, from the student to the school subject and back again to the student exemplifies the process of objectification and embodiment.” This widespread saying was mentioned in interviews by all student participants in the research. In the following sections, I would use a briefer term “traditional sayings about choice of class type” to refer to it. Walkerdine (1998) explained that the deep roots to the idea of women’s inferiority in relation to learning mathematics; they are treated as “irrational”, “illogical’” and too close to their emotions to be good at it. This was the case in China since people are used to treating boys as more “rational” and “logical” than girls, while girls as more “sensitive” in terms of emotional feelings and the arts. In addition, this traditional saying is also related to a strongly gendered workforce and the values attached to what are viewed as male areas (e.g. engineer, doctor, software designer) and female areas (e.g. secretary, translator) (Harding 1986). For example, M1 from the science class said he originally wanted to 21

See section 4.1.2 for the description of the different subjects to be learned in these classes.

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choose the arts class because he was interested in arts subjects. Later, he found that only a few boys chose arts class and it seemed that only those who really cannot learn science well would make that choice. Then he hesitated and decided to seek advice from his teachers. The teachers believed that because M1 performed very well in science subjects, he should choose them. From their viewpoint, it was better for boys to choose the science class in consideration of their future career development, even though, in this case, M1’s performance in arts subjects was also very good. After talking to his teachers, he finally decided to choose the science class. 22 In other words, the teachers already had ideas about what males do generally in society and why it is better for them to do science. They just passed these ideas on to M1. Other than M1, several other boys told their experience of pressure from their parents, peers, and teachers for choosing the arts class, even though they performed better in arts subjects. For example,

22

(original Chinese) M1: “䇈ᅲ䆱ˈ៥ᴀᴹᰃᛇ䇏᭛⾥ⱘˈ಴Ў↨䕗ᛳ݈䍷DŽ Ԛᰃ⬋⫳ᕜᇥ᳝এ䇏᭛⾥ⱘˈ䰸䴲៤㒽ϡ໻དˈ⧚⾥ᅲ೼䇏ϡ䍋ᴹⱘDŽ᠔ҹ ᔧᯊг᳝᣷ᠢDŽৢᴹ䎳㗕Ꮬ੼䆶њϔϟˈ㗕Ꮬ䇈៥⧚⾥䖬㸠䖬ᰃ䇏⧚⾥དˈ ાᗩᰃҢҹৢህϮ㾦ᑺ㗗㰥⬋⫳䖬ᰃ䇏⧚⾥ⱘདDŽ”; M1: “To tell the truth, I originally wanted to choose the arts class because I am interested in arts subjects. However, there are few boys go to the arts class unless they can’t perform well in science subject. As a result, I was struggling at that time and finally decided to seek advice from the teachers. They said because I am good at science subjects, I should choose the science class, even if in consideration of my future career development.”

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Original Chinese 1 R˖ЎҔМ㽕䗝ᢽ䇏⧚⾥˛ 2 M7˖䖭Ͼ䯂乬៥гᜢ䞡㗗㰥䖛DŽ催 ϔ߮ᴹⱘᯊ‫⾥⧚׭‬䛑ᰃ⧁䞠ⱘᑇഛ ߚˈ᭛⾥䛑ᰃ᳔དⱘDŽᑈ㑻ᰃ 10 ᴹৡˈ 䙷Ͼᯊ‫߮׭‬ᓔྟ䖬ᰃᤎᓔᖗⱘDŽৢᴹ ᓔᅠᆊ䭓Ӯˈ៥⠌⠌ᡞ៥偖њϔ乓ˈ 䇈Դ⧚⾥៤㒽䙷МᏂˈᇚᴹϡӮা㛑 䇏᭛⾥⧁৻ʽ៥㾝ᕫ䙷Ͼᇍ៥┰⿏咬 ࣪ⱘࠎ▔ķDŽҢℸ៥ህᇍ⧚⾥᳈䞡㾚 њϔѯˈ಴Ў៥ⶹ䘧㞾Ꮕᇚᴹ㽕䗝⧚ ⾥DŽ

English Translation 1 R: Why did you go for the science class? 2 M7: I have thought about this choice seriously before. When I first entered the class in Grade 1, my academic performances in science-related subjects were at the average level in the class. However, my scores in those arts-related subjects were the best in the class. My ranking in the whole grade was around 10 at that time. At first, I was quite happy about that. Later, after my father attended the parents’ meeting for the whole class, he scolded me and said, ‘You did so badly in science subjects, I cannot imagine if your only choice is to go to the arts class!’ I think my Dad’s scolding exerted a subtle influence on meķ. From then on, I paid more attention to the science subjects because I know that I have to select the science class in Grade 2.

Excerpt 5-11 In this excerpt we can see that although M7 received a high ranking in the whole grade, his father was not satisfied with it due to M7’s relatively “poor” performance in science subjects. In his opinion, boys should go for the science class and the arts class should be their last choice. M7 was influenced by his father’s opinion and accepted it acquiescently. He started to pay more attention to science subjects because he realised that being a boy, he had to choose the science class. In other words, under his parents’ influence and with the help of socialisation which favoured particular subject areas, M7 finally oriented himself towards the science class as the trajectory for his future studies. Apart from either the subtle or direct influence of parents, peer group influences on students’ choice also proved to be at work. For example, F7 in the study recalled that when they were in Grade 1, once they knew a boy who had planned to choose the arts class in Grade 2, some classmates would say to him, “ĘWA, are you serious? Are you

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really going to do that? 23 ” “WA” (in Chinese “છ”) is a Chinese exclamation showing strong surprised emotions. In their opinion, it was “insane” for boys to choose the arts class. Unless he could not learn science subjects well, he should not choose the arts class. That is why some girls in the arts class did not think highly of their boy classmates and labelled them as “not capable males”. For instance, when F8 was facing with the question in interview that if she were given the right to choose her partner in carrying out communicative tasks, who she would prefer to work with, boys or girls, she replied, “Definitely girls! Boys are too boring. I think boys in the arts class are too incapable.”24 Several other students also mentioned in interviews that boys might be looked down on if they chose the arts class. For example, F5 stated that “only a few boys would go for the arts class. Some boys were worried about being looked down upon if they chose the arts class.”25 M13 also pointed out that “lots of my classmates and friends always say that it is humiliating for boys not to choose the science class.” 26 All these examples show that there is a lot of peer group influence in the process of the reproduction of gender. As argued by Arnot, et al. (1998), peer group cultures and their definitions of masculinity and femininity play a vital role in students’ academic performance and attitudes towards it. As mentioned in section 4.2.2.1, students in the research lived together in the school dormitory. As a result, in terms of the social network, the school community had a much stronger influence on creating styles among students together as groups, than if the students were in the same school but went back home every day. On the whole, three sorts of reasons were presented by students in interviews for their choice of class types. Firstly, some students made their choice based on their own interests and academic performance. Secondly, there was a great tendency for those boys who did well in both arts and science subjects definitely to choose the science class, even though they were more interested in arts subjects, because of the influence of the widespread idealised gender norms (e.g. the case of M1 23

(original Chinese) F7: “છ છˈԴϡӮ৻ˈⳳⱘ‫”˛ⱘ؛‬ (original Chinese) F8: “ཇ⫳! ⬋⫳໾᮴㘞њDŽ៥㾝ᕫ᭛⾥⧁ⱘ⬋⫳䛑໾ᔅ њDŽ” 25 (original Chinese) F5: “⬋⫳া᳝ᵕϾ߿Ӯএ䗝᭛⾥DŽ᳝ѯ⬋⫳䅸Ўএ䗝᭛ ⾥ⱘ䆱߿Ҏৃ㛑ⳟϡ䍋ҪDŽ” 26 (original Chinese) M13: “៥ӀৠᄺП䯈ⱘ䆱䛑Ӯ䇈⬋⫳ϡ䗝⧚⾥໮϶Ҏ ଞʽ” 24

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and M7). Thirdly, those students who did not do well in science subjects would choose the arts class, although they were reluctant to make this choice. This was especially the case for the boys in the research. In their opinion, the principal skill to be tested in learning arts subjects was the faculty of memory, which was easier to improve than the intellect, which was to be tested when studying science subjects. In order to pass the UEE and increase their chances of further study at university, they finally chose the arts class. In other words, if they could have survived academically in the science class, they would by no means have chosen the arts class. This is in fact the most common reason found among boys in the arts class in this research. There is a paradox in students’ statements made in interviews. All of them admitted that they had heard the traditional saying about class type. When I asked them whether they thought this viewpoint was true, most of them said, “No”. Several students stated that some of their female classmates or friends were really good at scientific subjects. Moreover, in the past few years, in science classes, it was always girls who attained first place in the UEE and there were male students who did really well in the arts class as well. However, when I asked them later about their views concerning the phenomenon that there were far more girls in arts classes and more boys in the science class, they replied that it was normal and they just took it for granted. For example,

Students’ Representations of ‘Ideal’ Girls and Boys Original Chinese 1R: ᳝਀䇈䖛⬋⫳᳈䗖ড়䇏⧚⾥ˈཇ ⫳᳈䗖ড়䇏᭛⾥ⱘ䇈⊩৫˛ Î2F15: ᳝ʽԚ䖭ᰃ䫭ⱘDŽད໮ཇ⫳ ⧚⾥гᕜདⱘଞķDŽ 3R˖⦄೼Դ೼ⱘ᭛⾥⧁䞠ϡᰃཇ⫳ᕜ ໮௯ˈ⬋⫳ᕜᇥDŽᇍ䖭Ͼ⦄䈵ԴᗢМ ⳟ˛ Î4F15: 䖭Ͼ៥ᅲ೼䗝᭛⾥Пࠡህ᳝ ‫خ‬དᖗ⧚‫ޚ‬໛ⱘĸDŽ 5R˖ҔМি‫خ‬њᖗ⧚‫ޚ‬໛˛ 6F15˖಴Ў೼԰䖭Ͼ‫އ‬ᅮПࠡˈ䗮䖛 ϔѯ䯙䇏ଞˈ៪㗙਀߿Ҏ䇈DŽ៥ⶹ䘧ˈ ৃҹ⣰ᛇࠄˈৃ㛑䖭ϾᰃϾᖙ✊ⱘሔ ࢓ĹDŽ 7R˖ЎҔМ˛ 8F15˖಴Ў໻䚼ߚཇ⫳↨䕗‫أ‬䞡Ѣ᭛ ⾥ˈ⬋⫳ⱘ䘏䕥ᗱ㓈↨៥ӀᔎѯDŽ 9R˖Դ䖭Ͼᰃ᭄᳝᥂ⱘᬃᣕ䖬ᰃॄ 䈵˛ Î10F15˖≵᭄᳝᥂DŽ䖭ϾህᰃҢᇣ ⱘᯊ‫ˈ׭‬᳝ᕜ໮Ҏ೼䙷䞠䆆௯DŽህᰃ ԴҢᇣ᳝ϔϾॄ䈵೼䖭Ͼ䞠䴶ĺDŽԚ ᰃ᥂䇈ད‫ڣ‬᳝⾥ᄺᬃᣕDŽгᰃ䘧਀䗨 䇈Ļⱘ䙷ϔ⾡DŽ

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English Translation 1R: Have you heard about the saying that it is more suitable for girls to study in the arts class while it is more appropriate for boys to study in the science class? Î2F15: Yes! But it’s wrong. Many girls are also good at science subjects ķ. 3R: Now you are in an arts class and there are far more girls than boys in the class, what do you think of this phenomenon? Î4F15: Actually before I chose the arts class, I had already prepared myself psychologicallyĸ. 5R: What do you mean? 6F15: Before I made the decision, I had learnt it from readings or others’ sayings. I know and I guess that this is an inevitable situationĹ. 7R: Why? 8F15: Because most girls lay particular stress on arts subjects and boys’ logical thinking was better. 9R: Do you have any data to support your idea or is this just your own impression? Î10F15: No data (to support). When I was little, I heard many people say that. It’s like that you always have such an impression in your mindĺ. It is said that there are scientific data to support it. But it is also only hearsayĻ.

Excerpt 5-12 In this excerpt, F15 first opposed the traditional views in turn 2 because of the fact that many girls were also good at science subjects in turn 2. However, in turn 8, she said boys’ logical thinking was better than girls in a confirmative tone. In reply to my question in turn 3, F15

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mentioned that based on the “hearsay”, she thought the imbalance of numbers of girls and boys in the class was “an inevitable situation” and she had prepared herself psychologically in advance. In turn 10, she further explained that although there were no scientific data to prove that boys are good at science, she still believed this to be so because she has always had that “impression”. In other words, although F15 knew the saying was not always true, she did not consciously think a great deal about it and just took it for granted. It is part of her “habitus”, in a sense, formed in the process of socialisation. Once formed, it was difficult to remove. As M11 stated, “some students’ choice of class type was actually influenced by psychological implications, although some other students chose it according to their own interests.”27
M10 also explained that “we hear all these opinions a lot and then we lose our own thinking.” 28 Their statements show that once we are surrounded by stereotypical views that assault our consciousness daily, it is difficult to distinguish our own inner thoughts from the continuous barrage and then get lost (Hudak and Kihn 2001). Influenced by these viewpoints, girls paid more attention to arts subjects and took it as their duty to learn them well, while boys considered learning science subjects well as proof of their own capability. Many students in the research held the view that the most important ability for students in the arts class is the ability to recite. If a student recites well then he/she can obtain a high mark. In contrast, the essential ability for students in the science class is the intellectual ability to comprehend the content of the subject. For example, in interview F10 mentioned that she became really angry when her friends said she looked like a person who should choose the arts class. As explained by her, “Why do they think so? Am I really stupid? Not all those students in the arts class are stupid. It depends on your own interest. Aren’t there many girls who have won first place in the science class in recent years?”29

27

(original Chinese) M11: “᳝ѯৠᄺ䗝ᢽ᭛⧚⾥݊ᅲ䛑ᰃফњᖗ⧚ᱫ⼎ⱘˈ 㱑✊᳝ѯҎᰃḍ᥂㞾Ꮕⱘ݈䍷䗝ᢽⱘDŽ” 28 (original Chinese) M10: “៥Ӏ਀䖭ѯϰ㽓਀໮њˈ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬䛑≵᳝㞾Ꮕⱘᗱ ᛇњDŽ” 29 (original Chinese) F10: ““ህད‫ڣ‬៥ৠᄺ䇈៥”Դ௯ⳟⴔህᰃᄺ᭛⾥ⱘ”DŽ߁ ҔМ៥ⳟ䍋ᴹህ‫ڣ‬ᄺ᭛⾥ⱘˈ䲒䘧៥⡍߿ー৫˛ᄺ᭛⾥ⱘгϡϔᅮー௯ˈⳟ Դ㞾Ꮕ⠅ད௯DŽ⦄೼ϡᰃᕜ໮⧚⾥⢊‫ܗ‬гᰃཇ⫳৫˛”“

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From this statement we can see that there was a common view among students that those who learned science well were cleverer than those in the arts class.30 That is why F10 became angry because she thought her friend treated her as a person who was not intelligent enough to study in the science class. This may not have been her friend’s original intention at all. Her sensitive reaction to her friend’s comments revealed that in her deep mind, she was afraid of being labelled as a “stupid” person when she decided to study in the arts class. This corresponds to the stereotypical viewpoint that only those students who cannot do well in science would choose the arts class (see page 113). Although both girls and boys in the research presented the influence of the traditional sayings about choice of class type in discourse, in reality, boys choosing the arts class suffered more pressure psychologically than those girls who chose the science class. For example, girls in the science class also mentioned they had heard of the traditional saying; however, their choice of class type was either based on their personal interest or academic performance. Moreover, they did not feel that they were looked down upon in class and excluded by same gender peers. In other words, they are better prepared and more accepted if they choose the science class. Boys on the contrary continue to keep away from the arts class, especially those whose stereotypical attitudes about future occupations and roles are influenced by their parents, teachers and peers (Arnot, et al. 1998). Nevertheless, this does not mean that girls in science classes did not suffer any “discrimination” from the community. Some boys pointed out in the research that in their opinion girls in the arts class were more “tender” and “soft” and closer to their idealised female image, although in fact we can find some “traditional Chinese girls” in the science class as well. Students’ orientations towards different class types were related to their orientations towards different subjects to be studies in the class. For instance, there is another widespread view among student participants that English is a female subject and girls as a whole do better than boys in English. The finding that English is considered to be a female subject is not original in the SLE field (Clark and Trafford 1995:315) although it has been evidenced by some studies as stereotypical. In my MPhil project, data collected from interviews with students showed that the generally accepted “fact” that female students are superior to male 30

Several other students in the research also mentioned that they have heard this viewpoint.

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students in English learning was deeply embedded in both the male and female participants’ minds. However, according to the interactional data collected on site, the male students’ oral English level was not apparently lower, as they had originally imagined, than the female students’. What really differed were their attitudes towards speaking English in class.31 This finding was also observable in the current PhD project. In the research, students took it for granted that it was “normal” for boys to perform less well in English than girls. Several girls even held the views that those boys who learned English well were normally somewhat effeminate. For example, F8 declared, “Those males who are good at English are all a little bit effeminate. Normally boys are careless in speech and demeanour compared to girls, but they are quite careful and pay attention to detailed things.”32

Such a viewpoint can be easily refuted because there were numerous boys who were good at English and behave in a masculine fashion. In other words, it was a really extreme and unilateral assertion embodying traditional cultural views of ideal male behaviour. However, once such labels have been formed, they exist as mental representations and this means that they are every bit as real as if they were grounded in anything “natural”, and hence difficult to alter (Bourdieu 1984; Joseph 2004). M2 stated in interview, “There is wide saying in society that boys were better at science subjects and girls were better at arts subjects. So were the opinions towards English. Although not all people believe so but it still affects our thinking. My mum has been influenced by this saying and I also think that since others have such a feeling, it may be true.”33

31

See Appendix J for the selective findings of MPhil project. (original Chinese) F8: “㣅䇁↨䕗དⱘ⬋⫳઺䛑⿡ᖂ᳝ϔ⚍ཇᗻ࣪ⱘDŽϔ㠀 ⬋⫳໻໻੻੻ⱘˈҪӀϔ㠀↨䕗㒚㟈DŽ” ; F8: “Those males who are good at English are all a little bit feminised. Normally boys are careless in speech and demeanour compared to girls, but they are quite careful and paid attention to detailed things.” 33 (original Chinese) M2: “ϡᰃ⼒ӮϞ᳝ϔ⾡䇈⊩⬋⫳୘Ѣ⧚⾥ˈཇ⫳୘Ѣ᭛ ⾥௯ˈ㣅䇁гᰃⱘ௯DŽ㱑✊ϡᰃ᠔᳝Ҏ䛑Ⳍֵ䖭ϔ䇈⊩ˈԚᰃ䖬ᰃӮফᅗⱘ ᕅડⱘDŽ៥ཛྷཛྷህ᳝ফ䖭ᕅડDŽ៥гӮ㾝ᕫ᮶✊໻ᆊ䛑䖭М䇈䙷ᑨ䆹᳝ᅗⱘ 䘧⧚DŽ” 32

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In such circumstances, girls took achieving well in English to be one of their duties and showed more enthusiasm for experimenting with various ways of performing gender. They tried to take advantage of learning English well as a tool to reshape others’ impressions of them as capable girls, without being excluded by others. In contrast, boys may consciously or unconsciously overlook English. Their awareness of using English as a tool to achieve the above goal may be less well developed than in girls (see Chapters 7 and 8 for further discussion). English is a compulsory subject in both science and arts classes, nonetheless, most students took it as an arts subject and students in the arts class took achieving well in English to be their duty. For example, F7 mentioned in interview that their teacher always told them that since they were in the arts class, they should perform better in English than students in the science class. Influenced by their teachers’ opinion, students in her class gradually formed the idea that it would be really humiliating if they achieved less well in English than students in the science class. In their opinion, because the arts class paid more attention to knowledge concerning language and literature, so English should be more arts-oriented. Having considered all the examples students provided orally and practically, we can conclude that three interrelated stereotypical viewpoints existed widely in the school community, namely, students in the arts class should do better in English than students in the science class; girls should go for the arts class and boys go for the science class; girls were more competent in learning English than boys. They indicated the role of the school in social and cultural reproduction. The impact of these viewpoints on students’ construction and negotiation of their gendered selves will be further reported in Chapter 8 where students’ negotiation between their student role and gendered roles in discourse will be discussed.

5.5 Summary To sum up, data reported in this chapter show that students referred to fixed ideal gender characterisations in their discourse. On the one hand, boys showed stricter standards in terms of their ideal female images, while girls were more tolerant and flexible. On the other hand, boys experienced more pressure from both girls and boys to behave as an ideal male in the community than girls. The traditional stereotypical

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viewpoints about choice of class type being attached to idealised gender norms have been shown to exert influence on students’ actual choice. Compared with girls, boys suffered more pressure psychologically in choosing the arts class than girls did the science class. In other words, girls had won more freedom in class choice. Students’ choice of class type based on the subjects to be studied was like a watershed which also in turn indicated their ideal female and male representations which affected their choice. In the following chapter, students’ gender representations of English girls and boys will be reported.

CHAPTER SIX STUDENTS’ REPRESENTATIONS OF ENGLISH GIRLS AND BOYS

The teaching and learning of EFL with a CLT approach provides students with opportunities to confront various ways of being socialised into behaving as men and women (see sections 1.2.1 and 3.2). The television series “Friends” was consciously chosen in the research to bring to the surface students’ received and constructed viewpoints about girls’ and boys’ behaviour in English countries (see section 4.2.3). This chapter is composed of two parts. In section 6.1, students’ representations of English girls and boys are reported. In section 6.2, the sources of these gender representations are illustrated according to students’ own explanations.

6.1 The construction of views about English girls and boys Two general sorts of constructed views about English girls and boys were detected in the research. The prevalent one distinguished English girls and boys as a totally different group, the “Other”, from Chinese girls and boys, the “We”. Students holding such views took an essentialist view of gender. In contrast, several other students, although few, exhibited a constructivist view of gender roles in discourse. In their opinion, there were different types of girls and boys in both Chinese and English society and we cannot simply state that all Chinese women and men behave in one way and all English females and males behave in another. In other words, it was inappropriate to generalise. In the following sub-sections, these two different perspectives will be reported and discussed respectively.

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6.1.1 Essentialist views of English girls and boys In answering the question about their impressions of English girls and boys, many students simply grouped them into a community and described their impressions of the community. Some of them treated English girls and English boys as two separate gendered sub-communities and commented accordingly in the form of “foreign/Western girls…and foreign/Western boys…” Some did not even refer to girls and boys separately but used the term “foreigners/Westerners…” to cover both (see section 9.3 for a discussion of the terms “English”, “Western” and “foreign” that students used to describe girls and boys in native-English-speaking countries)1. Their discourse showed that they lacked gender awareness and did not think very deeply about how girls and boys in the target language community behave. In general, the following words and phrases were frequently used by student participants to describe both English girls and boys: “៤❳” (mature), “ᓔᬒ” (open), “⮃⢖” (crazy) and “༌ᓴ” (exaggerated). Moreover, “䈾⠑” (forthright), “㒙຿” (gentleman) and “߮↙” (stout-hearted) were used from time to time to describe boys and “⌏⋐” (vivacious) was used to describe girls. Some of these expressions had shared meanings and were used interchangeably by students. For example, the most widely used word, “open”, conveys several different meanings as reified by participants with examples. The other words students used to portray English girls and boys to some extent shared similar meanings with the connotations of this term. Firstly, the term “open” was used to refer to “openness in expressing emotions”. For example, F27 argued in the focus group, “I think girls and boys in foreign countries are all very open, they release their personal emotions much more freely.” Secondly, “open” was also used to indicate the intimate relationship between girls and boys. F5 stated in the group discussion, “It seems that there are no boundaries between them (English girls and boys). Maybe they are more open. In our China, girls always with girls and boys with boys. There are distances between us. Maybe sometimes we need also to do that. Sometimes we need communication. Sometimes when it needs to be open, we should be open. Our minds have not yet 1

In the following book, the terms “Western countries/Westerners”, “foreign countries/foreigners” and “English countries” were used interchangeably according to students” discourse in the research.

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been corrected.”2

In this statement, F5 compared the distance between girls and boys in English and Chinese communities and concluded that English girls and boys were more “open” than they were. After the comparison, she started to think about the necessity of reducing the distance between Chinese girls and boys. This revealed that the reflection of girls and boys in the target language community caused students to consider the way they behave in their own society, which helped to raise and improve their gender awareness. Only by firstly realising the differences that exist can students begin to think about their own way of behaving and hence increase their gender awareness. F1 also used the word “open” to describe English girls’ and boys’ behaviour. When I asked her to explain further what she meant by “open”, she replied, “I think all their behaviour is quite open”3 and then laughed. Then when I checked again with her whether she meant the relationships between girls and boys are intimate, she answered, “Yes, yes, yes” and then laughed again. Such laughter indicated that F1 felt somewhat embarrassed about discussing a “sensitive” topic. She used laughter as a strategy to help her to release her embarrassment and to some extent help her to cover up her real thoughts. Along with laughter, students sometimes also used eye contact when talking about some topics that they thought were sensitive. For example, in one all-female focus group, when F21 mentioned the expected behaviour of an ideal girl in China, other girls looked at each other first and nodded their heads and then laughed together. Thirdly, some students use “open” to describe the private (sexual) life of English people as being perceived as less reserved than that of Chinese people. For example,

2

(original Chinese) F5: “៥㾝ᕫҪӀ⬋ཇП䯈≵ҔМ⬠䰤ⱘˈৃ㛑↨䕗ᓔᬒ ৻DŽ‫ڣ‬៥ӀЁ೑ⱘ䆱ཇ⫳੠ཇ⫳П䯈ˈ⬋⫳੠⬋⫳П䯈ᅠܼϡϔḋDŽߚⱘ↨ 䕗ᓔDŽৃ㛑᳝ᯊ‫׭‬៥Ӏг䳔㽕䙷ḋˈ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬៥Ӏг䳔㽕Ѹ⌕DŽ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬䆹ᓔᬒ ⱘᯊ‫׭‬гᰃ㽕ᓔᬒⱘDŽ៥Ӏᗱᛇ䖬≵㑴ℷ䖛ᴹDŽ” 3 (original Chinese) F1: “៥㾝ᕫҪӀᭈϾ㸠Ў䛑ᤎᓔᬒⱘˈ ੉੉DŽ”

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Original Chinese 1R: ԴӀ㾝ᕫ “Friends”䞠㸼⦄ⱘ⫳ ⌏䎳⦄ᅲ⫳⌏Ӯ᳝Ꮒ䎱৫˛ Î2All: ⬉㾚䞠ⱘ੠⫳⌏䞠ⱘᰃ᳝Ꮒ 䎱ⱘDŽ 3R: 䙷ԴӀॳ‫ܜ‬ᇍ㕢೑ⱘॄ䈵੠ᕅ⠛ Ё᠔ড᯴ⱘ⫳⌏᳝Ꮒ߿৫˛ Î4F1: Ꮒϡ໮৻ˈ䛑ᰃ㳂ᓔᬒⱘ䙷⾡ ㉏ൟDŽķ 5M1: ௃ˈᰃˈ㕢೑// 6F2: ҪӀⱘ⾕⫳⌏ᕜхĸⱘ Î7M2: ៥Ӏ䇁᭛㗕Ꮬ㒭៥Ӏⳟ䖛ϔ ↉ҔМⱘĹ઺Ĺ˄ ˄ᕜ⼲⾬ϡৃ݀ᓔ䅼 䆎ⱘḋᄤ˅ ˅((݊Ҫᄺ⫳ϔ䍋໻ュ)) 8M1: ៥㾝ᕫҪӀⱘ⼒Ӯᑨ䆹ĺ䛑Ӯ ↨䕗ᓔᬒˈ䎳៥Ӏ㞾Ꮕ䑿䖍ⱘ䖬ᰃ᳝ ϔѯऎ߿ⱘDŽ

English Translation 1R: Do you think the life showed in “Friends” is the same as the real life there? Î2All: TV shows and real life were different. 3R: Then are there any differences between your original impressions of life in USA and the life showed in “Friends”? Î4F1: Almost the same, (they are) quite openķ. 5M1: Yes, in America // 6F2: Their private life is quite promiscuousĸ. Î7M2: Our Chinese teacher has shown us something Ĺabout o’Ĺ ((said in a mysterious tone as if it was unmentionable in public)) ((all students laugh together)) 8M1: I think their society ought toĺ be quite open. There are differences between us.

Excerpt 6-1 In this excerpt, F2 used the word “promiscuous” to describe her impression of the Americans’ personal lives. The video their Chinese teacher showed them was an episode about the process of producing nude paintings in English countries. This video was mentioned by many students in the research as an example of their impressions of English people. In turn 7, M2 used the ambiguous term “somethingĖabout” and the Chinese mood word “o’’ (“઺ ”) to talk about the video. The following laughter from the rest of the students showed that they all understood what M2 meant without the need to make anything explicit. Such a mysterious tone and the laughter indicated that, on the one hand, “open” in this excerpt also meant that English people were more open-minded in dealing with human bodies; on the other hand, students in the group agreed silently that such an issue was sensitive and not to be mentioned in public. Moreover, the students’ reply in turn 2, “TV shows

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and real life were different” looks as if they distinguished television series from real life. However, when I further asked them whether the life shown in “Friends” conformed to what they originally thought of life in America, in turn 4, they replied, “Almost the same, quite open.” This reply revealed that their pre-existing ideas about English girls and boys were more based on imaginations and they took that for granted. In other words, they did not critically look at gender representations in “Friends”. As argued by Joseph (2004), our relationships with others are sometimes based on the instinctive judgements we make about them. In addition, in this focus group discussion, it seems the girls were more sensitive than the boys to gender issues. When I asked the boys in the group about their favourite female character in “Friends”, the girls laughed immediately without waiting for the boys’ answer. Moreover, each time that a girl commented on the three male characters in “Friends”, some of them also laughed. The reason for their laughter was because they thought it was a sensitive matter for them to comment on the behaviour of students of the opposite sex. A similar situation was observed in other female-male group discussions. However, since I am a female researcher, either in interviews or same-sex focus group discussions, girls were more at ease in talking about gender issues with me. The general atmosphere in an all-female group discussion was livelier than in an all-male group discussion. In other words, I needed to put more effort into making both myself and boys in the group feel relaxed and at ease in order to talk about gender issues (see section 4.4.3 for more discussion). Fourthly, some students also used “open” to either describe the idea that English people’s thinking is very active and creative4
or their personalities are more vivacious.5 Fifthly, some students used the term to qualify their impressions of English people, saying that their body language is more exaggerated than that of Chinese people and their tone and intonation in speech is very enthusiastic. 6
Sixthly, some other 4

(original Chinese) F1: “ҪӀⱘᗱ㓈䴲ᐌ⌏䎗੠᳝߯䗴ᗻDŽ”; F1: “Their thinking is very active and creative.” 5 (original Chinese) M2: “໪೑ⱘཇ⫳᳈ࡴᓔᬒϔ⚍ˈ⌏⋐ϔ⚍DŽ”; M2: “Foreign girls are more open and vivacious.” 6 (original Chinese) F8: “ҪӀⱘ㙶ԧ䇁㿔䛑ᕜ༌ᓴⱘˈᤎᓔᬒⱘˈ䖬୰⃶‫ݦ‬ 䰽DŽ”; F8: “Their body language is quite exaggerated and open. They also like take risks.” (original Chinese) M11: “ҪӀᤎᓔᬒᕫDŽ䇈䆱䇁⇨䇁䇗ᕜ⛁ᚙˈ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬᳝⚍

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students also thought that English girls’ and boys’ behaviour was less constrained and they could do what they wanted. Last but not least, the term “open” in some other students’ discourse was equivalent to the term “mature”. Some students thought that English girls and boys were more “mature” than themselves because they dressed more like adults. For example, F10 described her impressions of foreign girls and boys as follows: .

“One of the biggest differences is that people there are more mature than we are here. People who are 16 or 17 (as we are) are totally different from us, like the way they dress up. We always wear school uniforms but they can wear their own clothes.”7




In addition, this “maturity” also meant that relationships between girls and boys were closer than those in China as indicated in other students’ discourse. For instance,

༌ᓴDŽ”; M11: “They are quite open, their tone and intonation is very enthusiastic and sometimes exaggerated.” 7 (original Chinese) F10: “ϔϾ᳔໻ⱘᏂ߿ህᰃҪӀ䙷䖍ⱘҎ↨៥Ӏ䖭䖍ⱘ ៤❳ᕜ໮DŽ16ˈ17 ቕⱘ䆱೼ҪӀ䙷䖍䖛ᴹⱘ䆱ህᰃ䎳៥ӀᅠܼϡϔḋDŽҪ ӀこⴔଞˈᠧᡂଞҔМⱘ㚃ᅮϡϔḋDŽ‫ڣ‬៥Ӏ䛑こ᷵᳡ˈཌྷӀᑨ䆹ৃҹこ㞾 Ꮕⱘ㸷᳡DŽ”

Students’ Representations of English Girls and Boys Original Chinese F6: ໪೑ⱘཇᄽᄤᕜ៤❳DŽϡᰃ䇈Ҫˈ ‫ڣ‬៥Ӏᄺ᷵ϔѯ↨៥ᇣⱘこᕫᕜ៤ ❳ˈԚ៥㾝ᕫཌྷӀϡᰃⳳℷⱘ៤❳DŽ ៥㾝ᕫ໪೑ⱘཇ⫳ⳳⱘᰃ‫ݙ‬೼ⱘᕜ៤ ❳, ᛳ㾝Ϟህᰃᕜ៤❳ⱘ䙷⾡DŽ✊ৢ ៥㾝ᕫ⬋⫳↨䕗টདDŽϡᰃ䇈៥ӀЁ ೑⬋⫳ˈ಴Ў៥ӀЁ೑⬋⫳䛑ᰃ⬋⫳ 䎳⬋⫳೼ϔ䍋ⱘDŽ✊ৢ៥᳝ϔϾৠᄺ ೼㣅೑ⱘˈ㒭៥Ӏথಲᴹⱘ✻⠛Ϟ⬋ ⫳‫ڣ‬໻Ҏⱘ䙷⾡DŽ䎳ཇ⫳݇㋏ᕜདⱘ 䙷⾡DŽᛳ㾝ད‫ڣ‬ҪӀᏆ㒣ህᰃ೼⼒Ӯ Ϟ˄໘џ˅ⱘ䙷⾡DŽ✊ৢ㾝ᕫৠϔᑈ 啘ⱘ䆱ˈ៥Ӏ᳈‫ڣ‬ᄺ⫳ˈҪӀ᳈‫⼒ڣ‬ ӮҎķDŽ

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English Translation F6: Foreign girls are really mature. It does not mean that, for example, in our school there are some (students) who are younger than me but dressed in a more mature way than I do. I do not think they are really mature. I think foreign girls are really intrinsically mature. You just have a feeling that they are really mature. And I think boys are quite friendly. It does not mean that our boys (are not mature), because our Chinese boys are always boys together with boys. I have a friend in UK and the boys in the pictures he sent to us look like adults. It seems that they have really good relationships with girls. It seems that they are already (working) in society. I feel that (girls and boys who are) at the same age (as we), we look like more as students and they look more like social beingsķ.

Excerpt 6-2
In the above excerpt, F6 pointed out that dressing in a mature way was not a real indication of maturity. In her opinion, foreign girls and boys maintained a closer relationship with each other at her age. They were more like adults in society (to use her term, “social beings”), while she and her peers were more like students at school. This is what she felt counts for inner and genuine maturity. The distance between girls and boys was mentioned by several other students. For example, F4 stated in interview, “It seems in foreign movies, if there are social gatherings, boys and girls will play together. But here, if we go out to have meals together, girls will sit with girls in a row and boys sit with boys in another.”8 Although students mentioned in the research that as a whole the distance between girls and boys was reduced than it used to be (see 8

(Original Chinese) F4: “ᛳ㾝໪೑⠛䞠㽕ᰃ᳝㘮Ӯⱘ䛑ᰃ⬋⫳ཇ⫳こᦦ೼ϔ 䍋DŽ‫ڣ‬៥ӀϔේҎϔ䍋ߎএৗ佁ⱘ䆱䛑ᰃཇ⫳ϔᥦˈ⬋⫳ϔᥦDŽ”

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section 5.3), in the school, it was not only teachers who separated girls from boys but also girls and boys themselves consciously kept a distance from each other, both inside and outside the class, to avoid others gossiping about them (see section 4.2). Schools operate to maintain and perpetuate gender relations in subtle ways thereby reinforcing the socialising values and norms (Chanana 1988). Such a separation, on the one hand, embodies the role of school in reproducing traditional Chinese ceremonialism in which keeping certain distance from each other is considered to be the behaviours of decent females and males. On the other hand, teachers, parents and even students themselves treated girls and boys in secondary schools as being at a dangerous age at risk of developing relationships (puppy love). Hence, they deliberately separated them. This was the main reason provided by teachers in interviews regarding separating girls and boys in class. F5 recalled, “When I was in primary school, sometimes I sat with a boy as my deskmate. But now if girls sit with boys, others will say that there must be something between them. Generally girls do not like others gossiping about them so they would rather choose to sit with girls.”9

Not only F5 but also some other students mentioned that teachers in primary schools often made boys sit with girls because they treated pupils at that age as physically and psychologically immature and they did not need to worry greatly about any “improper” behaviour between them. In other words, students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards gender issues generally and seating-arrangement particularly, were shown to be age-related. In addition, the situation regarding the seating arrangement was also related to the local sociocultural context of the city in which the students resided (see section 4.1.1). In the research, only a few students like F10 (see section 8.1) and M210 actually used the term “puppy love” to explain the reason for not allowing girls to sit with boys. For example, 9

(original Chinese) F5: “ᇣᄺⱘᯊ‫׭‬᳝䎳⬋⫳ৠḠ䖛DŽ⦄೼ⱘ䆱བᵰᰃ⬋ཇ ⫳ⱘ䆱ˈ߿ҎህӮ䇈䖭ϸϾҎ㚃ᅮ᳝ҔМ䯂乬DŽϔ㠀ཇ⫳ϡ୰⃶߿Ҏ䇈䯆䆱ˈ 䖬ᰃӮ䗝ᢽ䎳ཇ⫳ϔ䍋തDŽ” 10 (original Chinese) M2: “៥㾝ᕫ㗕ᏜᰃЎњ䰆ℶᄺ⫳ᮽᘟ৻ˈᑨ䆹≵᳝݊Ҫ ⧚⬅DŽ”; M2: “I think it is because our teacher takes into consideration the phenomenon of puppy love on campus. I don’t think there are other reasons.”

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Original Chinese 0䖭Ͼৃ㛑ᰃ㗗㰥ࠄ䖭Ͼ催Ёᯊ ‫ˈ׭‬क़Ă䙷Ͼᖗ⧚ⱘব࣪৻Ă˄ ˄‫ذ‬ 乓˅ ˅ডℷ䖭ḋത䖬ᰃৃҹⱘ৻ķDŽ

English translation M8: I think it is maybe because we are now in secondary school and teachers take into account, er…psychological changes…((pausing)) anyway it is ok for us to sit in this way (girls with girls and boys with boys)ķ.

)៥߮ᓔྟᰃϡⶹ䘧㗕ᏜЎҔМ 䅽ཇ⫳䎳ཇ⫳ϔ䍋തˈԚᰃ៥㾝ᕫ 䖭ḋതᑨ䆹ᰃ↨䕗᳝ད໘৻DŽҎ䭓 ໻њ௯ˈ᳝ѯϰ㽓ᰃϡϔḋⱘ௯ĸDŽ 

F6: At the very beginning I do not know why teachers make girls sit with girls. But I think there might be some advantages. We have grown up and something might have changedĸ.

0ᇣᄺ䎳ཇ⫳തˈৢᴹ䛑ᰃ䎳⬋ ⫳԰DŽ៥㾝ᕫ⬋⬋തˈཇཇത䖬㳂 ᳝ᖙ㽕ⱘˈ಴Ў䖭Ͼᑈ啘↉ᛇ⊩ଞˈ ᗱᛇ䛑ϡᰃᕜ៤❳ˈᕜᆍᯧ⢃ѯ䫭 䇃ĹDŽ 

M14: I sat with girls in primary school and later I was always sitting with boys. I think it is quite necessary to make boys sit with boys and girls with girls. Because, at our age, our mind is not mature enough and it is easy to make a mistakeĹ.

Excerpt 6-3 In this excerpt, M8 paused twice in order to think of a better way and term to use in talking about the reasons. Finally, he chose the term “psychological changes” to obliquely refer to the issue of puppy love. At the same time, he also showed reluctance to discuss the issue further by abruptly closing the conversation with the conclusion, “Anyway, it is ok for us to sit in this way”. Similarly, F6 and M14 both ascribed the reasons for making same-sex students sit together to avoidance of puppy love, but talked about it in an implicit way, “We have grown up and something might have changed.” and “At our age, our mind is not mature enough and it is easy to make a mistake.” This strategy of talking about “puppy love” displayed their unarticulated attitudes towards the issue (see also excerpt 8-1). Moreover, in excerpt 6-2, F6 distinguished being a student from being a “social being”. Her discourse implied that in her opinion, there are hidden “norms” relating to behaving as a good student, other than studying hard, including keeping a certain distance from the opposite sex students. This echoed with F15’s distinguishing of their

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roles as students from those of mature females at different stages of their lives (see section 5.1.1). In their opinion, there are hidden “norms” relating to behaving as a good student, other than studying hard, such as wearing school uniform and keep a certain distance from the opposite sex students. One widely observable phenomenon in focus group discussions was that students frequently compared the behaviour of English girls and boys with their own and referred to them as “Those foreign boys/girls” (in Chinese “ҪӀ໪೑⬋⫳/ཇ⫳”) in contrast with “We Chinese boys/ girls” (in Chinese “៥ӀЁ೑ཇ⫳/⬋⫳”). For example, the terms of “them (English girls and boys)” and “in our China” in F5’s statement on page 149 disclosed her labelling and otherisation of English girls and boys in relation to Chinese ones by establishing boundaries between the two groups. One of the effects of labelling is to isolate us from each other (Hudak and Kihn 2001). Labelling in a sense is a form of otherising because it creates a means of distinguishing between groups. Otherisation is the process of individuals’ ascribing identity to the “self” through attribution of characteristics to the “other”. It is becoming “the self” by defining “the other” (Holliday, et al. 2004:180). On the one hand, by defining English girls and boys as the “collective other”, students asserted their own identity as belonging to Chinese community (Wenger 1998). On the other hand, by treating girls and boys from different communities as being polar opposites, students ignored the full complexity of “the other group” and imposed crude and reductive identities on them (Holliday, et al. 2004:180). In short, this kind of otherisation, on the one hand, showed that students did not realise the fluidity and complexity of gender identity; on the other hand, it embodied students’ assertion of their identities as defined by the Chinese community.

6.1.2 Constructionist views of English girls and boys Not all students in the research talked about gender roles and behaviour as fixed nor did they described the ways in which English and Chinese girls and boys behave as polar opposites. Some, although not many, conveyed a dynamic view through their representations in discourse. Several students expressly pointed out that not all girls and boys in either China or English countries behaved in the same way. For example, M13 stated his impressions of English females and males as

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follows: “I feel that boys in Western countries are normally straightforward and outgoing. There are different sorts of girls in Western countries, just like in China. Some are very gentlewomanly, some are vivacious; some are like super woman and some are taciturn11.”

In this statement, although M13 did not mention the diversity of ways in which English boys behave, he showed a dynamic view of the way girls behave in both China and English countries. He, in other words, rejected the essentialist views of the “foreigner” and “the Chinese”. This opinion was shared by several other students in the research. For instance, M11 commented in the focus group, “Some foreign girls are really crazy but there are also some who are soft and tender, like some of the girls from the areas south of the Yangtze River12 in China.”13 In one focus group, when I asked students whether the six characters depicted in “Friends” were different from girls and boys around them, M16 replied, “Not really. Although they are very exaggerated characters, we can still find some similarities between them and the people around us. There is no individual who is as exactly exaggerated as them, but they have something similar. We can see some hint of it.” 14

The core point of M16’s statement was that they could find a ghost of the behaviour of those six characters in the girls and boys around them. In short, there was not one thing called “English behaviour” and another, “Chinese behaviour”, which were totally opposite. The following excerpt is another example,

11

(original Chinese) M13: “៥㾝ᕫ㽓ᮍⱘ⬋⫳䗮ᐌ䛑ᤎ໪৥ˈᓔᳫⱘDŽཇ⫳ ⱘ䆱㉏ൟᕜ໮ˈѨ㢅ܿ䮼ⱘˈህ‫ڣ‬៥Ӏ䖭䖍DŽ᳝ѯ↨䕗⎥ཇⱘˈ᳝ѯᕜ⌏⋐DŽ ᳝ѯ‫ڣ‬ཇᔎҎˈ≝咬ᆵ㿔ⱘг᳝DŽ” 12 In China, girls from areas south of the Yangtze River are always considered as the apotheosis of tender girls. 13 (original Chinese) M11: “໪೑ཇⱘ᳝ѯгᰃᕜ⮃⢖ⱘˈ᳝ѯгᰃ↨䕗ᶨᚙ ⱘˈ䎳Ё೑䙷ѯ∳फཇᄤᏂϡ໮DŽ” 14 (original Chinese) M16: “݊ᅲгϡᰃDŽ㱑✊䇈ҪӀ䖬ᰃ㳂༌ᓴⱘˈԚᰃҪ Ӏ䛑䖬ᰃӮ᳝ϔϾϾᇣ⚍䛑ᰃ䎳៥Ӏ਼䖍ⱘҎ㳂ⳌԐⱘˈ‫ڣ‬ҪӀ䖭Мܼ䴶ⱘ ༌ᓴⱘ䖬ᰃ≵᳝ⱘˈԚᰃ䛑䖬᳝ϔ⚍⚍ⳌԐDŽ᳝ѯᕅᄤ䖬ᰃৃҹᤩᤝࠄⱘDŽ”

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Original Chinese 1R: 䞠䴶ཇ⫳ⱘᗻḐ㸠ЎˈԴ㾝ᕫ䎳 ԴӀᑇᯊⱘЎҎ໘џⳌԐ৫˛ 2F9: ҪӀ᳈ᓔᬒϔ⚍DŽ 3Others: ᇍଞ, ཌྷӀᬒᕫᓔϔ⚍DŽ Î4F8: Ё೑Ҏ↨䕗৿㪘ϔ⚍DŽ㱑✊䙷 ḋⱘг᳝ˈԚᘏԧϡᰃ䙷М໮ Î5F16: ᇍˈᭈԧⱘ䍟࢓ᰃϡϔḋⱘˈ ៥㾝ᕫDŽህᰃ䇈Ё೑‫ ڣ‬Monica 䙷Мᔎ ⹀ⱘཇⱘ㚃ᅮᰃ᳝ⱘˈԚᰃᭈϾ䍟࢓ ৃ㛑ϡᰃ‫أ‬৥Ѣ䙷ϾDŽᰃ‫أ‬৥Ѣ⏽ᶨ ⚍ⱘˈ䖭ϔ㉏ⱘDŽ

English Translation 1R: What do you think about these girls’ (in “Friends”) behaviour? Do you think it is similar to the way you behave in daily life? 2F9: They are more open. 3Others: Yes, they are less reserved (than us). Î4F8: We Chinese people are more reserved. Though there are girls like them, as a whole not too many. Î5F16: Yes. The general tendency is different, I think. I mean, in China there are girls who are tough and powerful like Monica, but the main stream does not fall into that type. More girls belong to the tender type.

Excerpt 6-4 In this excerpt from an all-female focus group, on the one hand, the girls agreed that there were females who were “open”, “tough and powerful” and who were “tender”, “soft” and “reserved” in both China and English countries. On the other hand, they also agreed that, on the whole, females in Western countries were socialised into behaving more freely and in a more extrovert manner while girls in China were socialised into behaving in a tenderer and softer way. In short, there is no definite type of gendered behaviour that can be labelled as the “English way” or the “Chinese way” but the influence of socialisation is apparent in the way that it nurtures girls into accepting popular and ideal ways of gender performance.

6.2 Sources of the representations of English girls and boys In individual interviews and focus group discussions, students claimed three sources of their gender representations in English countries. One is the media (films, television series, novels, newspapers and magazines and the Internet), one is their English teachers and textbooks and the rest is their personal experience of communicating with native

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speakers.

6.2.1 Media representations According to students, most of their impressions of English girls and boys were taken from all kinds of media, of which films and television programmes influenced them most. M14 stated in the interview, “Most of our impressions of them (foreigners) are not from direct contact. You know, we don’t have many chances to meet foreigners. Most of our impressions come from the TV programmes and movies we watched.”15

There is no doubt that the media today is a very powerful tool for influencing the way people learn about the world by presenting all kinds of images and messages to them. It continually offers “pictures of life and models of behaviour in advance of actual experience” (McQuail 2005:494). Apart from the family and the formal education process, media influences are important in buttressing and perpetuating different gender roles (Wood 2009). One unavoidable problem with being programmed to attribute characteristics to particular people is that these characteristics become imposed on them, sometimes against the evidence, even though other groups may exhibit the same characteristics in equal measure. As Holliday, et al. (2004:197) state, “One may well approach other people looking for confirmation of the characteristics that may disconfirm the stereotype and consciously or unconsciously filtrate these disconfirmed characteristics automatically. It seems that once socio-psychological schemas are in place they become the lenses through which the world is observed and it is difficult to change them. Our experience of the world can become contaminated by the glasses that you have been handed to look at it through.”

In my data, although there is evidence that these received images of English girls and boys made students think about the way they themselves behave in society (see section 6.1), they did not seem to question these representations of Western images/behaviours projected in 15

(original Chinese) M14: “៥ӀᇍҪӀ≵ҔМⳈ㾖ⱘॄ䈵ˈԴⶹ䘧ˈ៥Ӏ᥹ 㾺ⱘ໪೑Ҏгϡ໮ˈЏ㽕ህᰃⳟ⬉㾚ˈ⬉ᕅ䞠ⱘDŽ”

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the media. When students in one mixed focus group were asked where their knowledge about English girls and boys came from, M10 replied that it was from his own feelings. When the researcher asked him how he formed the feelings, he said, “Because all foreigners are that open and we can see this from movies.”16 In other words, students like M10 took the presented images from films as real and representative. They used these preconceptions as kind of “template” to characterise English girls and boys and at the same time used it as a generalisation. See the following excerpt for another example. Original Chinese 1R: བᵰᰃԴӀ໘೼䖭ḋⱘ⦃๗ϟˈ ԴӀӮᗢМ‫˛خ‬ Î2M1: ᑨ䆹ӮᕜᛇএᅝᝄཌྷˈԚᰃ ϡϔᅮӮ‫خ‬ᕫࠄķDŽ 3R: 䙷ԴӀӮ䈵 Chandler 䙷ḋএ‫خ‬ ৫˛ 4Ms: 㚃ᅮϡӮⱘ! 5R: 䙷ԴӀⳟࠄҪ䖭ḋⱘ㸼⦄ᯊӮ㾝 ᕫ༛ᗾ৫˛ Î6M2: ҪӀᰃ໪೑Ҏ ໪೑Ҏ௯ĸ ໪೑Ҏ Î7M1: ҪӀ໪೑Ҏᑨ䆹 ᑨ䆹Ĺ ᑨ䆹ĹӮϡϔḋ ৻DŽ 8R: ಴Ў㾝ᕫ໪೑ҎӮϡϔḋˈ᠔ҹ 㛑໳᥹ফ˛

English Translation 1R: If you are in such a situation, what will you do? Î2M1: I should really want to comfort her though I am not sure whether I can do itķ. 3R: Then will you behave like Chandler (if you are in the same situation as him)? 4Ms: Definitely not! 5R: Then do you feel strange when you see his behaviour here? Î6M2: They are FOREIGNERS ma ĸ. Î7M1: Those foreigners OUGHT TO Ĺ behave differently. 8R: Because they are foreigners so you can accept that? 9Ms: Yes.

Excerpt 6-5 In the scene of “Friends” that I played to students for comment in the above excerpt, Monica and Rachael were quarrelling but their friend Chandler who was with them did not comfort either of them, but laughed at Monica’s way of speaking by saying, “Only dogs can hear you!” My 16

(original Chinese) R: “ԴӀ䖭ѯϰ㽓䛑ᰃҢા䞠њ㾷ࠄⱘDŽ” M10: “ᛳ㾝ࠄ ⱘDŽ” R: “ᛳ㾝ࠄⱘDŽᗢМᛳ㾝ࠄⱘ˛ M10: ಴Ў໪೑Ҏ䛑䙷Мᓔᬒ௯DŽ⬉ ᕅЁৃҹⳟࠄ䖭ѯଞDŽ”; R: “Where do all these impressions come from?” M10: “I can feel it”. R: “You can feel it. How do you feel it?” M10: “Because all foreigners are that open. We can see this from movies.”

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question for the boys at that moment was how they would react if they were in such a situation. M1 replied that he would really want to comfort the girls although he did not know whether he could do it. By questioning his ability to do so, M1 meant that although he really wanted to comfort them, in consideration of the distance between girls and boys, he might not have the courage to do it. In this excerpt, from both M2’s tone and the raised volume when referring to “foreigners” in turn 6, as well as M1’s reply, “Those foreigners OUGHT TO behave differently”, we can see that both of them labelled Chandler, the individual, as the collective other, “those foreigners”. The Chinese auxiliary word of mood “௯” that was translated into “ma” and the modal auxiliary verb “ought to” showed that both M1 and M2’s construction of foreign girls and boys was based on their preconceptions and inferences about the way they behave. Several other modal auxiliary verbs were frequently used in students’ discourse in the research, for example, “must” (“their minds must be more open than us”) and “all” (“all Chinese are reserved, while Western people are all more open”).They all indicated a tone of taking something for granted. In other words, students accepted the way the characters behaved and generalised them since, in their opinion, foreigners should behave differently from them. Another example is given below: Original Chinese 1R: 䙷䞠䴶ϝϾཇᄽᄤˈԴ㾝ᕫ䎳Դ Ӏᑇᯊⱘ᥹䖥৫˛ 2F5: ៥㾝ᕫਉᶊ䙷Ͼ≵᳝㽓ᮍ䙷М ⛁⚜ 3All: ᇍᇍDŽ 4M9: ࡼ԰≵᳝䙷М༌ᓴ 5R: 䙷ԴӀ㾝ᕫⳟҪӀ䖭ḋℷᐌ৫˛ Î6All: ໾ℷᐌњķ! ((䇁䗳ࡴᖿ)) ໾ℷᐌњ 7R: ЎҔМ˛ Î8All: ಴ЎཌྷӀᰃ㽓ᮍҎDŽЁ೑Ҏ 䖭ḋህᰃϡℷᐌⱘĸ.

Excerpt 6-6

English Translation 1R: Do you think girls (in “Friends”) behave in a similar way to girls around you? 2F5: I think we will not quarrel that fiercely. 3All: Yes! Yes! 4M9: Our body language would not be that exaggerated. 5R: Do you think it is normal for them to do that? Î6All: DEFINITELY NORMALķ! ((speeding up)) 7R: Why? Î8All: Because they are Westerners. If they are Chinese, it’s abnormalĸ.

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In this excerpt, again, students distinguished Western people from Chinese people and took it for granted that they behaved in different ways. Although students thought the body language and quarrels shown in the episode “Friends” were exaggerated, they treated it as “normal” behaviour for Westerners, although it would be “abnormal” for Chinese. The speeding up and emphasised utterance in turn 6 “DEFINITELY NORMAL!” and the inferred causal relationship in turn 9, “Because they are Westerners” showed that students had pre-existing viewpoints of English girls and boys and they just applied these stereotypical views to what they saw in “Friends” without critically reviewing “Friends” as a drama, which might not depict the real and representative life of people in the USA. In other words, they were reproducing the stereotypical viewpoints in their discourse. Similar declarations can be found everywhere in the research. For example, in another focus group discussion, I asked students to imagine how they would feel if the characters in “Friends” came to live with them. M3 answered, “No particular feelings, there are already people like them around us. But we should differ from each other a lot, the culture gap. Because they are Americans, they are more open.”17

The first part of answer seems to indicate that M3 realised that there were no definite differences between Chinese and English girls and boys because he could find individuals who behave like girls and boys in “Friends” around him. However, the second part of answer revealed that M3 consciously separated Chinese from English girls and boys and ascribed the reason to the “culture gap”. M2 also stated in group discussion, “Boys in foreign countries are more resolute. This is related to traditional Chinese culture, the Confucian ideology, the doctrine of the mean18. Girls on the whole are more open and lively.”19 It indicates that “otherisation” is sometimes the “cultural first view of individuals’ taking hold within the roots of society” (Holliday, et al. 2004:21). 17

(original Chinese) M3: “≵ҔМᛳ㾝ˈ䑿䖍ህ᳝䖭⾡ҎDŽϡ䖛៥ӀⳌᏂᑨ䆹 ᕜ໮ˈ᭛࣪ҷ≳DŽ಴ЎҪӀᰃ㕢೑Ҏˈ᠔ҹӮ᳈ᓔᬒϔ⚍DŽ” 18 “Doctrine of the mean” or “Golden mean”: (philosophy) the felicitous middle between the extremes of excess and deficiency. 19 (original Chinese) M2: “໪೑⬋⫳᳈߮↙ˈ䎳Ё೑Ӵ㒳᭛᳝࣪݇DŽ‫ۦ‬ᆊ᭛࣪ˈ ЁᒌП䘧DŽཇⱘᘏᕫᴹ䇈᳈ࡴᓔᬒϔ⚍ˈ⌏⋐ϔ⚍DŽ”

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6.2.2 EFL teachers and textbooks EFL teachers and textbooks were listed by students as the second source of their gender representations in English countries. Students claimed that their teachers, especially when they were in Grade 1, talked about foreign cultures in class to make the class livelier. Moreover, the English textbook they now used was designed under the guidance of the New National Curriculum of English Teaching (see section 3.2). Some units of it talk about aspect of life in English countries, such as their popular festivals. Teachers sometimes showed them pictures and videos to introduce the background information of the unit. Those teachers who had experience of studying abroad also talked about their personal experiences of the country to students in the class (see section 4.1.1). On the whole, students showed an eagerness to learn more from their teachers about the way English girls and boys behave. M16 stated in interview, “(Our) teachers talk about it (the culture, the way people behave) sometimes but not very frequently. Those students who have a great interest in it will look for relevant information by themselves. Sometimes I will pay attention to the pronunciation and vocabularies that English native speakers in the textbook use.”20

By saying “paying attention to the pronunciation and vocabularies that English native speakers in the textbook use”, M16 meant imitating the way native speakers speak. In interviews with teachers, all of them mentioned that with the guidance of CLT and task-based language teaching, subjectively, they really wanted to enrich the teaching content by introducing more information about foreign culture, behaviour of native speakers and their social customs. Moreover, since they knew the importance of improving communicative ability in context, they would also like very much to provide students with as many opportunities as possible to allow them to interact in English with each other both inside the and outside the class. In fact they have made some effort to achieve this goal (see sections 4.1.1 and 4.2.1). However, the UEE system not only exerted pressure on 20 (original Chinese): “㱑✊៥Ӏ㗕Ꮬ䇒ූϞ᳝䆆䖭ѯϰ㽓ˈԚᰃᑊϡᰃᕜ㒣 ᐌDŽ᳝ѯৠᄺৃ㛑ᇍ䖭ѯ↨䕗ᛳ݈䍷ˈ✊ৢ㞾Ꮕএᡒѯ䌘᭭DŽ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬៥ህӮ ⊼ᛣϔϟ䇒ᴀϞҪӀⱘথ䷇੠⫼䆡DŽ”

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students, but also on themselves as teachers since their teaching performance was mainly assessed on the basis of the scores students attained in the examination. In such circumstances, they had no choice but to spend most of their class time in teaching grammar and the use of vocabulary and expressions. The situation gets worse grade by grade as teachers in the study explained. In Grade 1, they organised many communicative activities not only inside but also outside the class, such as showing films to students and telling stories about foreign cultures. Alongside the oral English class taught by the American teacher in the school (see sections 4.1.1 and 6.2.3), they themselves had set up additional oral English classes to improve students’ communicative competence. In Grade 2, they started consciously to reduce the time for students to carry out communicative tasks in class. Usually, they divided each unit of the textbook into four sessions, namely, a warm-up session, text content explanation session, grammar tutoring session and exercise checking session. Each session lasted for one to two lessons (45 minutes per lesson). Only in the warm-up session and sometimes also the exercise checking session, would they introduce information as background to the text, including knowledge about the social cultural context in English countries, and they would assign students some communicative tasks to carry out either in pairs or in a group of four. According to classroom observations in the research, the warm-up session was the most popular among students. In Grade 3, teachers would miss out the warm-up session and spend most of the time in class in reviewing and checking exercises with students, which dealt with grammar points and use of vocabulary and expressions students had acquired in the previous two years. Such a lack of information from teachers about cultures in English communities, including the way English girls and boys behave, restricted students’ access to the resources that they originally should have had. It deviates from the goal of EFL teaching which is to teach both linguistic and cultural knowledge relating to the English community and reduces the possibility for students to improve their gender awareness through learning of EFL (see sections 7.4.1 and 9.2 for more discussion).

6.2.3 Students’ personal experiences Students’ personal experience of contact with native speakers came from two main sources: the long-term resident male American teacher in

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the school and the female American teacher at the summer school they attended in Grade 1. The American teacher has been employed in the school for four years. Along with his main duty which was to teach the spoken language, he sometimes also organised “English corners” for students where they could talk with each other freely in English 21 . According to observation, he used a variety of communicative tasks in his class and he always made girls sit with boys to carry out tasks. He stated in interview that he noticed that students did not have many opportunities to work with students of the opposite sex in the school and he wanted to provide them more chances in his class. Furthermore, whenever a Western festival occurred, he would celebrate it with the students. Many students mentioned that on Thanksgiving Day, he dressed up and gave away candies to students class by class. Some students quoted his behaviour as an example to illustrate their impressions of English speakers’ behaviour since he was the one with whom they were most familiar. For instance, when M9 was asked his impression of English girls and boys, he replied “Their behaviours are quite exaggerated. Take our foreign teacher as an example. Last time he gave us candies in costume. It is quite normal in foreign countries but we never saw this before.” 22 In this statement, M9 referred to those behaviours he had never seen before as “exaggerated”. In general, students’ contact with the American teacher after class was not frequent because, on the one hand, the teacher was very busy; on the other hand, students said they felt under pressure when talking to him outside the class because they regarded him, as a teacher, as socially distant from them and lacked the confidence to talk with him in English. In addition, many students also mentioned their experience of communicating with a female American teacher at the summer school they attended in Grade 1 who they thought was very nice and patient. Students recalled that she liked laughing a lot and was a very easy-going woman and not as restrained as women in China. Although students had the experience of interacting with native speakers, it was not frequently and the number of English native speakers they had met so far was in general limited. As a consequence, 21

Students in this research were taught by him weekly in Grade 1 and occasionally in Grade 2. 22 (original Chinese) M9: “ህ䆆៥Ӏⱘ໪ᬭ৻ˈҪ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬ᓘ䍋ᴹᕜ༌ᓴᕜ༌ ᓴDŽ‫ڣ‬Ϟ⃵こⴔ䙷⾡㸷᳡㒭៥Ӏথ㊪DŽ‫ڣ‬໪೑ⱘ䆱䖭⾡ᚙ‫މ‬Ӯ↨䕗ᐌ㾕ˈԚ ᰃ៥Ӏⱘ䆱Ңᴹ≵㾕䖛DŽ”

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their impressions of English girls and boys were based on their own personal experience and were necessarily unilateral and stereotypical. They used images in their minds based on these limited experiences and pre-existing ideas as “templates” for commenting English girls and boys. In the research, I called these unilateral and pre-existing viewpoints “stereotypes” which missed the full complexity of the gender performance of English girls and boys. It was the images that pupils already had of them that gave rise to their stereotypes of them (Holliday, et al. 2004:23). Stereotyping is a way of thinking that does not acknowledge internal differences within a group, and does not acknowledge exceptions to its general rules or principles. It is “the process by which all members of a group are considered to have the characteristics attributed to the whole group” (Scollon and Scollon 2001:168). From this perspective, “stereotyping” is interrelated with the two other sociolinguistic processes that have been discussed in section 6.1.1, namely ‘labelling’ and “otherisation”. They have been described by sociolinguists and often picked up as being very relevant in sociology of education as well as being used in discourse, to make distinctions between people or telling people they are different. Stereotypes are often infected by prejudice, which in turn leads to otherisation (Holliday, et al. 2004:23). A label is part of our lived experiences and can become a part of one’s life, one’s identity and hence, difficult to replace (Hudak 2001:3). Individuals are surrounded at times by all kinds of labels which potentially result in societal prejudices, for example, with regard to age, gender and nationality (Hudak and Kihn 2001). All of these three sociolinguistic processes miss the complexity of social identities and cause problems for effective intercultural and cross-cultural communication. By saying either stereotyped views or imagined images, I do not mean that images students represented are certainly not real, but they are unilateral which leads students to otherisation and affects their negotiation of gender in English (see section 7.4.2 for further discussion). In particular, there were those stereotypes based on some accurate observation, such as students’ representations based on the observed ways in which the two American teachers behaved. It is not the truth of these observations which is the problem. The problem is that stereotypes limit the students’ view of the gender performance of English girls and boys to just one or two salient dimensions and consider those to be the whole picture (Giles and Noels 1997; Scollon and Scollon 2001). Once they arrived at the “appropriate” designation, their quests for meaning

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stopped. Their designations carried the weight of common sense (Holliday, et al. 2004). M7 commented in interview, “We don’t know much about foreign cultures and the way they were educated to grow up. So maybe we have some unilateral or rough knowledge about it, but it cannot trigger my own deep-seated identification with it.”23 In other words, such stereotypical representations made them feel socially and psychologically distant from English girls and boys. Schumann (1976) treated “social distance” and “psychological distance” as two hypothesised factors, which are significant in learning a second language. He defined “social distance” as “distance pertaining to the individual as a member of a social group which is in contact with another social group whose members speak a different language”. He further pointed out that the degree of “social solidarity” between the two groups will “affect how a second language learning group acquires the language of a particular target language group” (1976:267). According to students’ own accounts in discourse, most of them treated themselves as a social group which was different from English girls and boys as another (see section 6.1.1). “Social distance” was therefore used in the research to refer to the distance pertaining to individual students as members of the Chinese social community in contrast with the members of an English community. “Psychological distance” in SLL, according to Schumann’s definition, is determined by how an individual feels in the process of learning a second language. It involves three facets. Firstly, “language shock”, the severity of which is influenced by how the individual learner reacts when confronted with new words and expressions and how he/she deals with such feelings. Secondly, “culture shock”, learners experience culture shock when they find problem-solving and coping mechanisms do not work in the new culture. Activities which were routine in the native country require great energy in the new culture, which causes disorientation, stress, fear and anxiety. The resultant mental state can produce a whole syndrome of rejection, which diverts attention and energy from SLL. What might be “culture shock” for students in the research in relation to their construction of gender identity is the difference they perceived from all kinds of sources about the way English girls and boys are socialised into behaving. Thirdly, the “ego 23

(original Chinese) M7: “៥Ӏњ㾷໪೑᭛࣪੠䙷䖍ҎᰃᗢМফᬭ㚆䭓໻ⱘ ϡ໮DŽ ᠔ҹৃ㛑᳝ϔѯ⠛䴶ⱘ៪㗙ᰃ↨䕗㉫⬹ⱘᇍ໪೑᭛࣪ⱘњ㾷ˈԚᰃ 䖭▔ϡ䍋៥⏅ሖ⃵ⱘ䅸ৠᛳDŽ”

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permeability”, which is the ability that some people have “to partially and temporarily give up their separateness of identity” and, as a consequence, be more effective learners of the second language (Schumann 1976: 272-273). “Social distance” and “psychological distance” are attached to each other and interplay with each other. They used to be adopted to examine the experience of immigrants who are learning a second language in the target linguistic community (Schumann 1976; Holliday et al. 2004). This differs from students in my research who are learning EFL in a local FL context. They may not experience such strong “culture shock”, “language shock” and “ego permeability” as immigrants, but they do experience some as indicated by the data. Immigrants may feel distant because of the distance experienced in daily contact, while some students in the research felt distant due to their unfamiliarity with the way native speakers behaved. M5 declared in interview, “Maybe because we seldom meet foreigners and did not know the actual way they behaved. What we learnt from books and movies are quite limited as well. I feel that they are far away from me and not approachable, no sense of belonging.”24

The influence of such behavioural distance that students felt existed between themselves and English girls and boys will be further explored in Chapter 7 as one of the main constraints in students’ gender negotiation in English.

6.3 Summary To sum up, data reported in this chapter show that the majority of students in the research exhibited an essentialist view rather than a constructivist view of gender roles and behaviours. They made a differential construction of Chinese girls and boys as the “we” who are generally less “mature” and “open” than the “other” English girls and boys. They talked about them as if they were characterising gender identities as being permanent and unable to change. In contrast, several other students did not regard the two, namely, the way English and 24

(original Chinese) M5: “ৃ㛑᥹㾺໪೑Ҏ↨䕗ᇥ৻ˈҪӀࠄᑩᗢМ⫳⌏ⱘ៥ Ӏгϡᰃᕜ⏙ἮˈҢкϞ੠⬉ᕅ䞠њ㾷ࠄⱘ↩コ↨䕗ሔ䰤DŽ៥㾝ᕫҪӀⱘ⫳ ⌏⾏㞾Ꮕᕜ䘹䖰ˈৃ㛑≵᳝䙷⾡҆ߛ੠ᔦሲᛳDŽ”

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Chinese girls and boys behave as being opposites or, as if they were one or the other, but manifested a constructivist view of gender. The three sources claimed by students for their gender representations in English countries indicated, on the one hand, that their EFL teachers did not provide them with as much information as expected about the way native speakers behave (see section 7.4.1 for further discussion). On the other hand, most students’ representations were biased and stereotypical based on media representations, which they did not critically review, and their limited contact with native speakers. In the following chapter, the influence of these received and constructed English gender images on students’ gender awareness and performance in English are examined. This is to discover when students come across unfamiliar ways of behaving as girls and boys in the course of learning English, how they react to them discursively and practically.

CHAPTER SEVEN STUDENTS’ REACTIONS TO GENDER REPRESENTATIONS OF ENGLISH GIRLS AND BOYS

This chapter deals with the following five issues. Section 7.1 reports students’ reported reactions to unfamiliar ways of performing gender. Section 7.2 discusses the advantages of negotiating gender as EFL learners as specified in students’ discourse, including the use of English as a foreign language in interaction, and the specific characteristics of the EFL class. Students’ behaviour enacted in carrying out communicative tasks as attempts to behave like English girls and boys are illustrated in Section 7.3. Section 7.4 deals with constraints students encountered in negotiating gender in English, including the influence of the examination system in China and students’ sense of belonging to the mainstream Chinese community. Section 7.5 discusses “key sites” listed by students for their gender negotiation in English.

7.1 Students’ claims about responses to gender representation of English girls and boys In the research, many students, especially girls, showed their willingness to try different/unfamiliar ways of behaving as a girl or boy via the use of English. For example:

Students’ Reactions to Gender Representations Original Chinese F1: ៥୰⃶೼䇒ූϞ‫خ‬ᇍ䆱㒗дˈህ 䈵䖭ѯ taskˈ៥Ӯᇱ䆩ⴔএᛇ໪೑Ҏ ӮᗢМএ䇈DŽ໪೑Ҏˈ⬋⫳ཇ⫳䇈䆱 ᯊ䛑⡍߿༌ᓴˈ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬㞾Ꮕᛳ㾝㞾Ꮕ гᕫᇱ䆩ϔϟˈ⡍߿༌ᓴഄ㸼⦄ߎᴹˈ 䖭᮴ᔶЁᇍԴ㞾ᏅⱘᚙᛳЄᆠг᳝ᕅ ડⱘ௯DŽ

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English Translation F1: I like doing dialogue practice in class. For example, when I am doing these communicative tasks, I will try to think how foreigners speak. Foreigners, both girls and boys, are very exaggerated when they are talking. Sometimes I feel I should also try to speak in an exaggerated manner as they do, which will enrich my own emotions unconsciously.

Excerpt 7-1 In this excerpt, F1 showed her willingness to speak in a way that she thought foreigners would. In her opinion, foreigners often behave in an exaggerated manner and she wanted to try to communicate with others in a similar way to enrich her own emotions in English. What F1 referred to as an “exaggerated manner”, as explained in the interview, included intonation of foreigners’ speech, their body language and choice of vocabulary. Such impressions served as “templates” for her later convergence of style of delivery in English (see section 7.3). Commenting in a group discussion on the way characters in “Friends” behave, F4 claimed, “I feel that both female and male in foreign countries are quite open, like girls inside, they show their feelings out whatever they are. I think this should be the major difference compared to us. For example, I think the way Monica behaves is also good. I have never behaved in that way before. I am eager for that a little bit. If I have the chance, I will try (that way).”1

Although Monica is not F4’s favourite female character (see section 5.1.1), she still showed her eagerness to behave in the way she (Monica) behaves since she never had before. The influence of the social and 1

(original Chinese) F4: “៥㾝ᕫ໪೑䙷ѯ⬋ⱘཇⱘ䛑⡍߿ᓔᬒˈ䈵䞠䴶ⱘཇ ⫳᳝ҔМᚙ㒾䛑Ⳉ᥹থ⊘ߎᴹњˈ䖭ᑨ䆹ᰃ੠៥Ӏ᳔໻ⱘऎ߿, ↨བ‫ڣ‬ Monica 䖭ḋгᤎདⱘDŽ៥ҹࠡ䛑≵᳝䖭ḋ‫خ‬䖛DŽ៥᳝ϔ⚍⚍৥ᕔˈ᳝ᴎӮ ৃҹᇱ䆩ϔϟDŽ”

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psychological distance students felt between the way they and English girls and boys behaved was not always negative. On the one hand, it made some students consciously avoid those different ways (see section 7.4.2). On the other hand, sometimes it also triggered students’ interest in trying out these unfamiliar ways. F7 stated in interview, “Their ways of leading life are REALLY different from ours. So sometimes I will want to have a try. Maybe because (I have been) living in this environment too long. Sometimes I get tired of it and want to try those new ways. I think students at our age normally want to seek for things out of curiosity. There must be some influences but the degree depends on how much attention you paid to it, how much interest you have in it.”2

In this statement, F7 ascribed her willingness to try out different ways to the great distance between “old ways” and “new ways”, the tiredness resulting from long residence in the same community and her curiosity to these “new ways”. Several other students made similar statements in the research. For example, F9 stated, “We have been living in an environment for such a long time and it is natural to feel tired of it. The way Western people live seems much easier than ours. Girls there can say whatever they want to say and do whatever they want to do. Sometimes I do want to try to live in that way if I can.”3

M15 also pointed out, “I feel in China, there are invisible standard requirements for behaving as a female or male. If you are a boy, you should behave like this and if you are a girl, you should behave like that. When I read foreign books, it seems that you can behave just in the way you want to behave, there are no conventions to restrict you.” 4 2

(original Chinese) F7: “ཌྷӀⱘ⫳⌏ᮍᓣ䎳៥Ӏⳳ ⳳⱘᕜϡϔḋDŽ᠔ҹ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬ Ӯ᳝ϔѯᛇᇱ䆩ⱘᖗ⧚DŽ໻ὖᰃ೼䖭Ͼ⦃๗Ё⫳⌏໾Йˈ᳝ᯊ‫⚺׭‬䍋ᴹњˈ ህ᳝ᛇᇱ䆩䙷⾡ᮄⱘᮍᓣⱘ‫ࡼކ‬DŽ 㗠Ϩ⦄೼䖭Ͼᑈ啘௯ˈ䛑᳝䗑∖ᮄ༛ⱘ ϰ㽓DŽЏ㽕ᰃⳟԴ݇⊼ⱘ໮ᇥˈᛳ݈䍷ⱘ໮ᇥDŽᕅડ௯㚃ᅮ᳝ⱘDŽ” 3 (original Chinese) F9: “៥Ӏ೼ϔϾ⦃๗ϟ⫳⌏Йњ㞾✊䛑Ӯ⮆‫ⱘ׺‬௯DŽ㗠 Ϩ㽓ᮍҎ䙷⾡⫳⌏ⳟ䍋ᴹԐТ↨៥Ӏᛀᛣᕜ໮DŽ䙷䖍ⱘཇ⫳ᛇ䇈ҔМህ䇈Ҕ Мˈᛇ‫خ‬ҔМህ‫خ‬ҔМDŽ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬៥⹂ᅲᕜᛇᇱ䆩䙷ḋএ‫ˈخ‬བᵰ᳝ᴎӮⱘ䆱DŽ” 4 (original Chinese) M15: “៥㾝ᕫ೼Ё೑䖭䖍ᇍ⬋ᗻཇᗻ䛑Ꮖ㒣ᔶ៤њϔ⾡

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Such views about English girls and boys experiencing no fetters at their behaviour did not of course present the truth. It is just those restrictions were not visible to them because of the unilateral and stereotypical gender representations they received and constructed that made them think so. In the research, students were asked to clarify their reasons for enjoying “Friends”. The most frequently mentioned reasons were, “It is a comedy, dialogues between characters and their body language are very humorous”; “It shows a very different life from ours. I really admire the life inside, so free. Friends care about each other. They are like a family.” In other words, one reason why “Friends” is so popular among students is because it pictures an imaginary world which may has nothing to do with reality but it provides students with ways of having fantasies.

7.2 Students’ claims about advantages of negotiating gender as EFL learners 7.2.1 Advantages of using English as a foreign language in interaction In both interviews and focus group discussions, students mentioned frequently that one advantage of using English to express themselves differently from the way in which they usually do in Chinese lay in lexical choices and style of delivering speech, which differed between the two languages. Many used this difference in choosing vocabulary and phrases accompanied by a different tone and intonation in order to, for example, compliment others. For instance:

ᕜᷛ‫ⱘޚ‬㾘㣗DŽᰃϾ⬋ⱘԴህᑨ䆹㽕ᗢМᗢМḋˈᰃϾཇⱘԴህ㽕ᗢМᗢМ ḋˈ✊ৢᛳ㾝ⳟ໪᭛к䞠ˈԴ㛑ᗢМḋህᗢМḋˈ≵᳝ҔМᴵḚᴹ䰤ࠊԴDŽ”

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Original Chinese 1R: བᵰ⫼Ё᭛Ӯ䇈þᕜདˈ䴲ᐌẦÿ П㉏ⱘ৫˛ 2F7: ៥Ӏϔ㠀Ӯ䇈 þ௃ˈᤎདⱘÿ 䖭ḋDŽ಴Ў㣅䇁ˈᗢМ䇈ਸ਼ˈ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬ ⳟ⬉㾚ଞ៪㗙਀ᔩ䷇ˈ㾝ᕫҪӀ䇈ᕫ ⡍߿᳝ੇ䘧ˈ䙷ѯཇ⫳䇈Ā噗Oh, it’s Ė VE::RY GOOD!’ˈ䖭⾡䅽Դᛳ㾝ࠄ䴲 ᐌẦDŽ᠔ҹ䖤⫼㸼䖒䍋ᴹᚙ㒾᳈ࡴ催 ⍼ϔ⚍ķDŽ✊ৢᑇᯊ௯ህ þ௃ˈ䖬㸠 ৻ÿህ䖭ḋᄤˈ↨䕗ᑇ⎵ϔ⚍DŽЁ᭛ ህᰃ䖭ḋˈ㽕ᰃԴ䇈þ઺˖ ˈདད དད ଞ˖ ˖ʽ ÿ ˈ䖭ḋ߿ҎӮ䇈Դ໾༌ᓴњˈ ϡℷᐌDŽ 3R: ᠔ҹ㾝ᕫ⫼㣅䇁䆆ϡ༌ᓴˈ⫼Ё ᭛䆆ᕜ༌ᓴ˛ 4F7: ௃ˈᇍᇍᇍDŽⳌᏂ䖬㳂໻ⱘĸDŽ

English Translation 1R: In Chinese, will you say ‘it’s really good. It’s excellent’ (to praise others)? 2F7: We usually say like ‘Yes, it’s good.’ Because English, how to say, when you watch TV or listen to tapes, you will find that the way they speak is really attractive. When you hear those girls say ‘噗Oh, it’s ĖVE::RY GOOD!’, it makes you feel great. When you use these expressions in English, your emotion increasesķ. The way we usually say ‘en, it’s ok/good’ (in Chinese) is a little bit tame. In Chinese, if you say ‘Oh:: it’s SO GOOD::!’, others will regard you as a crazy person, too exaggerated, abnormal. 3R: So you will not feel crazy if you speak in English in that way while in Chinese it sounds too exaggerated? 4F7: En, yes, yes, yes. They differ a lot ĸ.

Excerpt 7-2 F7 praised her partner frequently in performing communicative tasks well by saying “it’s Ė VE::RY GOOD!”; “it’s REA::LLY GOOD!” and “EXCELLENT!”. In a follow-up interview, I asked her whether she often complimented others in the same ways in Chinese in daily life. The above excerpt reveals her answer to the question, which showed that, in her opinion, there were big differences between using Chinese and English to compliment others from the perspectives of lexical choice, tone and intonation. It was “normal” for English people to praise others showing strong emotions. The example she gave was “噗Oh, it’s ĖVE::RY GOOD!” in which the adverb “very” was used to modify ‘good’ and volume was raised by emphasising both of the words and extending the vowel. In contrast, Chinese people are used to saying it in a mild tone “en, it’s ok/good.” Otherwise, they would be regarded as over-exaggerated and “abnormal”. M14 also mentioned in interview,

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“When I was doing these English tasks with my deskmate, I praised him sometimes. But if it was doing tasks in Chinese, I will not do that because it feels rather contrived and disingenuous. In English, I feel it is quite natural. In Chinese, it is a little bit pompous.”5

It is indeed the use of language in interaction and the style of delivery which made students feel different. Some students also mentioned that in Chinese, they seldom used words such as “excellent”, “amazing”, “wonderful”, “great”, “marvellous” and “superb” to compliment others since they are too strongly linked to emotion. In English, these words are sometimes used to shorten the distance between interactants as the main goal and thus lose their original meanings (i.e. they are niceties for social purposes). Nonetheless, students in the research did not know this (i.e. they lacked grasp of sociocultural conventions and pragmatic rules in English) and used them in the way that their original meanings implied (Dewaele 2008). In other words, students were carrying out a pragmatic transfer between Chinese and English in interaction. A wide range of language variables, such as accent, speech rate, pitch variety, loudness of voice, can have important influences not only “on people’s general impressions of others”, but also “with regard to potential decisions they may make about them” (Giles 1979:4). Hence, by using these words which are full of emotion, not only did their relationships with each other became more intimate, but the individual’s impression on others was also changed, and the person came to be regarded as more lively and enthusiastic. Some students mentioned that their learning of English had changed their personal character a little. For example, F1 mentioned that she was more active in English class and more lively and unrestrained when speaking English. One of her roommates said in interview, “F1’s English is really good. She speaks English quite often in the dormitory. We are roommates. When she speaks English, she is quite crazy, hehe. When we are talking together, she will put in some English words sometimes. She often uses English to make exclamations and will sometimes say to me ‘Let me teach you an English expression’; hehe ((laughs gently)).”6 5

(original Chinese) M14: “៥੠៥ৠḠ‫خ‬䖭ѯ㣅䇁 task ⱘᯊ‫ˈ׭‬៥Ӯ⫼㣅䇁 এ䌲ᡀˈԚབᵰᰃ䆆Ё᭛ⱘ䆱ህϡ໻ӮDŽ಴Ў㾝ᕫ䖭ḋ㳂‫خ‬԰ˈ㰮ӾⱘDŽ㣅 䇁௯㾝ᕫᕜ㞾✊ⱘDŽ⫼Ё᭛ᴹ䆆ⱘ䆱ህӮ᳝⚍༌ᓴDŽ” 6 (original Chinese) “F1 ⱘ㣅䇁ⳳⱘᕜϡ䫭DŽཌྷᐌᐌ೼ᆱᅸ䞠䆆㣅䇁DŽ៥Ӏᰃ

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The girl told me this story about F1 in quite a happy and relaxed tone. She said that although F1 was crazy in English but she was cute. She liked F1 and admired her English ability very much. From all this, we can see that F1 had used English successfully to enrich her personal emotion as she expected in Excerpt 7-1. F10 also stated in interview that learning English made her become more cheerful and confident. She said, “On the one hand, my horizon was broadened. On the other, once I learned something in the course of learning English, I would tell it to my peers. If you keep talking, you will become more communicative with others and be more vivacious.”7

In short, F10 also used her ability in English as a valuable tool to reshape her personal, social and communicative selves as a girl. Another example provided by students was the use of phrases, such as “I love you” and “I miss you” to show close relationship among friends. They mentioned that in Chinese, they seldom said “៥⠅Դ” (“I love you”) or “៥ᛇԴ” (“I miss you”) to their close friends face to face since such statements were too overtly emotional. However, they would codeswitch to using “I love you” or “I miss you” in English since they thought English people used these frequently and it was natural to say them in English. In other words, students perceived the phrases “I love you” and “I miss you” as having greater emotional weight in Chinese than in English (Dewaele 2008). M13 stated, “I think when (we are) speaking Chinese, traditional cultures and customs penetrate unconsciously. When (we are) speaking English or watching English movies, naturally we will be integrated into their cultures. We will be accustomed to it and do not take it as something weird.”8 ৠϔϾᆱᅸⱘDŽཌྷ䆆㣅䇁ⱘᯊ‫↨׭‬䕗⮃⢖ˈ੉੉DŽᑇᯊ䎳៥䆆䆱ⱘᯊ‫׭‬Ӯ䆆 㣅䇁ˈህᰃᑇᯊӮこᦦ⚍㣅䇁䖛এDŽ✊ৢ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬ᛳ্ህӮ䆆㣅䇁DŽ✊ৢ᳝ᯊ ‫׭‬Ӯ䇈៥ᬭԴϔহ㣅䇁৻DŽ੉੉DŽ” 7 (Original Chinese) F10: “ϔᮍ䴶៥ⱘ㾚䞢ᓔ䯨њDŽ ঺ϔᮍ䴶ˈ↣ᔧ៥೼ᄺ д㣅䇁䖛⿟Ё᳝ᄺࠄϰ㽓ⱘᯊ‫ˈ׭‬៥ህӮਞ䆝៥ⱘৠᄺଞˈ᳟টଞDŽབᵰԴ ϔⳈϡ‫ⱘذ‬䇈ˈԴህӮবᕫ᳈ࡴѸ䰙ˈᗻḐгӮ⌏⋐ᓔᳫᕜ໮DŽ” 8 (original Chinese) M13: “៥㾝ᕫ೼䇈Ё᭛ⱘᯊ‫┰ˈ׭‬ᛣ䆚䞠ህӮ᳝ϔ⾡Ӵ 㒳д֫ⱘ䌃こˈ✊ৢ䇈㣅䇁ଞ៪㗙ⳟ㣅䇁⬉ᕅଞҔМⱘˈᕜ㞾✊ഄᗱᛇህӮ 㵡ܹࠄҪӀⱘ᭛࣪䞠DŽ✊ৢህ㾝ᕫᕜдҹЎᐌˈ≵᳝㾝ᕫҔМଞ⡍߿༛ᗾ

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F8 also explained, “Their culture is more open and ours is more reserved. Like the way we express our meaning in Chinese is more through implications.”9 In the cultural context of China, love is usually expressed in an indirect way and more often reflected through doing things that we think are good for the person we love.10 The use of English in interaction from this perspective empowers both girls and boys to behave in a more enthusiastic way without risk of being scolded. When they were speaking English, their self-positioning as L2 learners gave them the courage to speak in a “crazier” way. Once this self-positioning was accepted by others, the danger of being laughed at by others in trying out these “new ways” would also decrease. In short, they can use learning of English as a foreign language as a safe tool which allows them to behave enthusiastically in communication with peers of both the same and opposite sex. In other words, educationally speaking, the using of English language production, namely, the uttering it, provided them with a linguistic space which allowed them to talk about those “sensitive issues” without being excluded by other adolescents (see section 9.1.4 for further discussion).

7.2.2 Advantages because of the specific characteristics of the EFL class The other advantage of negotiating gender in English claimed by students was related to the following two specific characteristics of the EFL class, which made it an invaluable site for performance. Firstly, compared with other subject classes students attended at school, the EFL class provided them with much more opportunities to communicate with each other. M14 stated in interview, “In other classes, it is mainly the teacher who keeps talking in class, while in English class, our teacher

ⱘDŽ” 9 F8: “ҪӀⱘ᭛࣪䛑ᰃ↨䕗ᓔᬒϔ⚍ⱘ௯ˈ៥Ӏⱘ䆱↨䕗‫ݙ‬ᬯDŽ‫ڣ‬ᰃ䆆䆱৘ ᮍ䴶䛑↨䕗৿㪘ϔ⚍DŽ” 10 Traditional Chinese culture instructs girls to be gentlewomen who should behave conservatively and speak gently and softly. It nurtures boys to behave moderately and should not overtly to show their emotions but to conform to the golden mean.

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gives us more chances to discuss and communicate with each other.”11 This was also confirmed by F5, “Although chances for us to communicate with each other in English class are not that many, compared to other classes, it is still the most. In fact, there are numerous communicative tasks in the English textbook, it is just our English teacher does not use all of them.”12

From F5’s statement, we can see that in one respect, of all the subject classes students attended, the English class provided them with the greatest number of opportunities to interact with each other in carrying out communicative tasks, through which they could play different kinds of role and negotiate their gender identity accordingly if they wanted to. In other respects, their English teachers did not make full use of the tasks in the textbooks but assigned too much time to teaching grammar, and use of words and expressions in order to help them to obtain higher mark in examinations (see sections 6.2.2). From this perspective, teachers acted as gatekeepers to students’ gender construction in school and increased the “weight” of socialisation into Chinese society by emphasising passing the UEE at the expense of improving students’ communicative competence in interaction (see section 7.4.1 for further discussion of the constraint that the Chinese examination system brought to students in terms of their gender negotiation in English). Secondly, many students represented the atmosphere of the EFL class as unique which made them feel at ease and able to play various gender roles safely in interaction. As F8 clarified in interview, “The atmosphere of English class is different from other (subject) classes. We can learn lots of interesting things about foreign countries, like the way foreigners speak and live. In that atmosphere, you will get relaxed and behave more daringly.’13

11

(original Chinese) M14: “݊Ҫ䇒Џ㽕ᰃ㗕Ꮬ೼䆆ˈ✊ৢ㣅䇁䇒㗕ᏜӮ᳝᳈ ໮ᴎӮ㒭៥Ӏˈ䅽៥Ӏ㞾Ꮕ䅼䆎ˈѸ⌕DŽ” 12 (original Chinese) F5: “㣅䇁䇒Ϟ㱑✊㒭៥Ӏ‫ خ‬task ⱘᴎӮгϡᰃ䙷Мഄ ໮ˈԚᰃ↨䍋݊Ҫ䇒ᴹㅫᰃ᳔໮ⱘњDŽ݊ᅲ㣅䇁ᬭᴤᴀ䑿䆒䅵ⱘӏࡵᕜ໮ⱘˈ াᰃ㗕Ꮬ≵䙷М⫼㗠ᏆDŽ” 13 (original Chinese) F8: “㣅䇁䇒ⱘ⇨⇯䎳݊Ҫ䇒ϡϔḋDŽ៥Ӏৃҹᄺࠄϔѯ ᕜ᳝䍷ⱘ݇Ѣ໪೑ⱘџᚙˈ໪೑Ҏ䇈䆱ⱘᮍᓣଞˈ⫳⌏ⱘᮍᓣଞП㉏ⱘDŽ ೼ 䙷⾡⦃๗ϟ៥ӀህӮᬒᵒᕜ໮ˈгӮ᳈ᬒᕫᓔ䇈䆱DŽ”

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F4 mentioned similar feelings, ‘You will feel more relaxed in English class. Because in our English class, our teacher not only teaches grammar, she frequently teaches us some background information about foreign countries and foreigners. Besides, you also have some chances to communicate with each other, it’s good. When we know the next class is English class, we will be quite relaxed; if it was the chemistry class, we would work hard on our homework.”14

F10 further pointed out that some students, especially those introverted girls, who used to be afraid of speaking in public, now dare to speak loudly when carrying out communicative tasks in the EFL class.15 In other words, English communicative tasks empowered them to behave more daringly as girls than on other occasions. Many students mentioned that they thought the English class is more interesting than other classes and they behaved more actively in it.16 Moreover, several other students pointed out that the teaching styles of their EFL teachers also counted. The more communicative the style that their English teacher adopted, the more free space they would have for their self-development.17 This suggests that the more communicative occasions that teachers provided for students, the more possibilities existed for students to discover both themselves and others and to try out various ways of performing gender. In the following section, students’ behaviour enacted in communicative tasks will be examined in detail to see 14

(original Chinese) F4: “㣅䇁䇒ϞԴӮ㾝ᕫ᳈䕏ᵒDŽ಴Ў៥Ӏ㣅䇁䇒ⱘᯊ‫׭‬ 㗕ᏜӮ㒣ᐌ䆆ϔѯ㚠᱃ⶹ䆚ˈ݇Ѣ೑໪੠೑໪ҎⱘDŽৠᯊ៥ӀгӮ᳝↨䕗໮ ⱘᴎӮ䎳ৠᄺѸ⌕ˈ䖭ᤎདⱘDŽϔ䇈ϟ㡖䇒ᰃ㣅䇁䇒৻ˈ໻ᆊህӮᕜ䕏ᵒˈ ϔ䇈ᰃ࣪ᄺ䇒৻ˈ໻ᆊህ⢖‫ݭ‬԰ϮDŽ” 15 (original Chinese) F10: “᳝ѯৠᄺキ䍋ᴹϡᬶ䇈Ԛᰃ⾕ᑩϟᬶ䇈ˈ㣅䇁 task 䖭Ͼгᰃ㒭ԴϔϾ䬏⚐ⱘᴎӮˈᇸ݊ᰃ‫ݙ‬৥ⱘཇ⫳DŽ”; F10: “Some students are afraid of speaking in public but they dare to say in private. English tasks offer them a good chance to practise, especially for introverted girls.” 16 (original Chinese) F8: “㣅䇁䇒↨䕗᳝ᛣᗱˈ݊Ҫ䇒≵ᛣᗱˈ೼㣅䇁䇒ϞӮ ↨䕗⌏䎗ϔѯDŽ”; F8: “English class is quite interesting. Other classes are not interesting. (I am) more active in the English class.” 17 (original Chinese) M7: “ϡৠⱘ㗕Ꮬ䇒ූ⇨⇯гϡϔḋDŽ㗕Ꮬ䍞ᰃᓔᬒᓣᬭ ᄺˈ៥ӀѸ⌕ⱘᴎӮህ䍞໮ˈ㞾Ꮕথሩⱘぎ䯈г䍞໻DŽ”; M7: “Different teachers create different class atmospheres. The more open the model the teacher adopts, the more communicative chances we will have and the more space we will have for our self-development.”

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whether and how they have used the advantages provided by using English as a foreign language in interaction and the specific nature of the EFL class to behave differently as boys or girls as they claimed in interviews and focus group discussions.

7.3 Behaviours enacted in tasks as attempts to behave like English girls and boys Many student participants mentioned how they imitated the way native English speakers speak as one of their attempts to behave differently as Chinese girls or boys. F6 stated in interview, “I really like reading English in the morning. I am a little bit narcissistic, hehe ((laughing mildly)). I will pretend to myself that I am talking with foreigners in English and it feels really good, hehe.”18 Later, when I asked her what she meant by pretending to herself that she was talking with foreigners, she replied, “I will imagine if it was two native speakers talking with each other, how they will speak to each other, what words and expressions they will use, what their tone and intonation will be and what gestures they will use. Then I will do it according to these imaginations.”19

In other words, she accommodated her behaviour so that it converged with the way she imagined native speakers would behave. They were ways which were attractive to her in terms of behaving as a good second language learner. Accommodation is the process whereby individuals try to become like somebody else. The good language learner typically imitates the way native speakers speak and pretends to be an English girl or boy. Norton (2001:165) claims that “While the learners were initially actively engaged in classroom practices, the realm of their desired community extended beyond the four walls of the classroom.” In a sense, F6 created an imagined community when reading English which was the desired community to which she wanted to belong to as a second language 18

(Original Chinese) F6: “៥ᕜ୰⃶ᮽ䇏䇒䇏㣅䇁ˈ៥᳝⚍㞾ᘟˈ੉੉ˈ‫؛‬㺙 㞾Ꮕህᰃ໪೑Ҏ೼䆆㣅䇁ˈ䖭⾡ᛳ㾝ᕜདˈ੉੉DŽ” 19 (Original Chinese) F6: “៥Ӯᛇ䈵㽕ᰃᰃϸϾ໪೑Ҏ೼䇈䆱ⱘ䆱ˈҪӀӮᗢ М䇈ˈӮ⫼䙷ѯ䆡এ㸼䖒ˈҪӀⱘ䇁䷇䇁䇗ӮᗢМḋˈ䖬᳝᠟࢓DŽ✊ৢ៥ህ ᣝ✻䖭ѯᛇ⊩এ‫خ‬DŽ”

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learner. As Ebaugh (1988:7) claims, “[B]y identifying with a group that one hopes to join, the person begins to be like members of the group in value orientation and normative expectations before actually entering the new role.”

In other words, the sense of belonging to the imagined community when learning a second language makes the learner inclined to converge their behaviour (verbal and non-verbal) with that of the target language community. This kind of imitation of the ways English people speak was detected widely in students’ interaction behaviours in tasks. In the research, F1 showed a willingness to try to communicate with others in the same exaggerated way that she thought foreigners normally used in order to enrich personal emotions (see section 7.1). She achieved this in performing communicative tasks with M1 in the research. [following abstracted from task 1] 1F1: = What’s your dream now? 2M1: My dream. I want to go to Beijing University. 3F1: Beijing? 4M1: Beijing, yeah. Because I have…I have= 5F1: a long time to wait 6M1: =No, I was…I was born here… but I was go out there Î7F1:Ė REALLY? 8M1: Yeah 9F1: WHY? 10M1: Because I have been there for nearly 10 years Î11F1: ĹREALLY? ((tone full of emotions)) 12M1: Yeah Î13F1: OHĻ, I think maybe your father= 14M1: yeah…yeah… 15F1: =Do business there= [following abstracted from task2] 16F1: = And maybe we can decorate our TREE with some gifts. 17M1: Yeah, yeah. 18F1: Balls. The people who will perform can get a gift. 19M1: So we can also dance around it. Î20F1: Oh::, it's NICE!= ((tone full of emotions)) 21M1: =Yeah. […] 22F1: = With some lights?

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23M1: OH::: ((tone full of emotions, prolonged vowel)) 24F1: It's CRAZY. 25M1: That's nice. Î26F1: It's AMAZING!= 27M1: =Yeah, yeah. [following abstracted from task 3] 28F1: =And every time he came back from the shop, he will complain, complain ((correcting the pronunciation)) that he is too fat to wear beautiful clothes and I think I will buy a suitable one for her. For my father, maybe I will bought a, a tie for him. Î29M1: Oh::: SO nice= 30F1: =It’s cool= Î31M1: =So NICE! So NICE! […]

Excerpt 7-320 In this excerpt, turns 1 to 15 were abstracted from the free talk task when F1 and M1 were talking about their dreams. Turns 16 to 27 were taken from Christmas party organising task and the remaining part of the excerpt was from the decision-making task concerning the celebration of Father’s Day and Mother’s Day in China. Throughout the excerpt, F1 and M2 developed a conversation full of emotions. Their tone and intonation went up and down with the change of emotion, for example, the surprised tone in turn 11, the complementary tone in turns 20 and 31. In particular, the girl, F1’s tone and intonation were really varied. The first use of the word “ĹREALLY” in turn 7 with raised volume showed her doubt about M1’s statement. The second use of “ĹREALLY” in turn 11 in a rising and emphatic tone and volume indicated her further surprise about what M1 had said. Later, the falling tone of “OHĻ” in turn 13 disclosed her acceptance of M1’s declaration. Moreover, her praise in turns 20 and 26 also showed the upswing of her emotions by prolonging the pronunciation of the word “OH:::” and the emphasis on the words “NICE” and “AMAZING”: the word “amazing” is not often used in Chinese due to the strong emotions attached to it (see section 7.2.1). In the follow up interview, when F1 was asked whether she would 20 In the book, expressions in excerpt from students’ performance in communicative tasks were the students’ original expressions; their grammar mistakes were not corrected.

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speak in a similar way in Chinese to the way she did here in English, she answered, “Not in Chinese. It will be a little bit odd to speak in Chinese in this way. I will not say ‘it’s amazing’ in Chinese which seems quite exaggerated and weird. In English, it’s very natural.”21

In other words, the function of both the linguistic and paralinguistic features F1 displayed in doing tasks is to imitate a particular style of delivery associated with speakers of English which F1 has seen or imagined. She did not need to be worried about being scolded for being too “crazy” or “exaggerated” in speaking English in that way since she was just imitating the “natural” way native speakers spoke. Her emotional style of delivery was well accepted by her partner M1 and affected his behaviour in interaction as well. According to M1’s own representation and comments from his classmates and teachers, he is a “conventional” boy who likes traditional Chinese culture very much and his daily behaviour is very gentle. In the excerpt, his tone and intonation was always gentle while performing the first and second tasks. From task three onwards, his speech started to be fuller of emotion. For example, in turns 29 and 31, he complimented F1’s idea by saying “Oh::: SO nice” and “So NICE! So NICE!” respectively with prolonged pronunciation, raised volume and emphasised vocabulary. In follow-up interview, he said F1 influenced him a lot when carrying out tasks by leading the topic and making him more involved in the communication (see section 8.3.1). The fact that English empowered F1 as an able girl full of enthusiasm but without her partners and peers excluding here for being an aggressive girl was evidenced throughout the research (see sections 7.2.1, 7.4.2 and 8.3.1). One reason lies in her successful negotiation of self as a girl belonging to the Chinese community and a good second language learner who can try out the ways in which native speakers behave in discourse (see section 7.4.2 for further exploration). Another reason lies in her ability to use English properly on appropriate occasions. Several other students also imitated the way native English speakers speak when performing the tasks. However, their over-imitation of tone 21

(original Chinese) F1: “Ё᭛ϡӮDŽЁ᭛䖭ḋ䇈ⱘ䆱ᛳ㾝᳝⚍༛ᗾDŽ↨བ೼ Ё᭛Ё៥ህϡӮ䇈 ‘it’s amazing’ˈ䖭ḋᛳ㾝ᕜ༌ᓴгᕜ༛ᗾˈ㣅䇁ህᕜ㞾 ✊DŽ”

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and intonation incurred objections from their partners and peers. For example, M11 stated in interview that he really liked to imitate the way foreigners speak and indeed did so in performing the tasks. 1F10: What’s your favourite program? 2M11: Oh, maybe it’s CCTV-Ę10 ((imitating the tone of foreigners)) 3F10: Oh噗˛ 4M11: NO. 5F10: Hehe, ((laughs gentle)) I never heard that, can you tell me something about that? Î6M11: It is about, something about science. And it will tell you something about new invention and some scientists such as ⠅಴ᮃഺ ((laughs because does not know the English expression)) and it is ĘVERY WONDERFUL. You can learn MA::NY MA::NY things from it. 7F10: So does it mean that you are so interested in scientist? Right? Î8M11: 噗YE::S! RI:GHT! ((in a really exaggerated tone, laughing while talking)) 9F10: ઢਔਔ˄ ˄cannot stand the tone of M11’s speaking˅ ˅ […] 10 M11: Will you send some gifts? 11F10: Oh, oh, CARD. Card with them. I think it's also very important because when we grow up, we may have less communication ((wrong pronunciation))// 11M11: communication ((right pronunciation)) 13F10: Communication ((right pronunciation)) with them and we can have a chat with them. Er, we can talk with them heart by heart and let them know what we are and let us know what they are. It can be a very good way to know our parent. Î14M11: ĘOH::, that's EXTREMELY good. 15F10: I think so ((speaks fast))

Excerpt 7-4 In the excerpt, M11 frequently used a very exaggerated tone when expressing his feelings. He often prolonged the pronunciation/vowel of some words, such as “MA::NY”, “OH::”, “YE::S” and “RI:GHT” in conversation. Moreover, he also used such expressions as “It is Ę VERY WONDERFUL” in turn 6 and “ĘOH::, that's EXTREMELY good” in turn 14 by emphasising either the adverb or the adjective, which does not often occur in speaking Chinese. Such a pompous way of speaking English made his partner F10 feel uncomfortable. She code-switched to Chinese “ઢਔਔ” in turn 9 to show her feelings.

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Although the intention of M11’s imitation was positive, namely, to sound more like a native speaker, as claimed in interview, because of his “over-accommodation”, it was rejected by his partner in interaction. Several of M11’s classmates mentioned in interview that M11’s imitation of the way native speakers speak was “artificial” and “overdone”. M13 commented in interview, “Some of my classmates like imitating. For example, M11 often speaks deliberately in a foreign manner, which is too exaggerated to stand. The others are OK.”22 In short, such an overdone imitation did not empower M11 as a Chinese boy who can behave differently and enthusiastically as a second language learner, but caused his peers to exclude him. In other words, to make optimum use of English as a second language as an invaluable tool to negotiate one’s gender identity, individuals should do it in an appropriate way. Students’ imitative behaviour was more like a projection of their own representations of the way English native speakers speak. They were trying to imitate the way native speakers behave according to the “template” extracted from various sources (see Chapter 6). Sometimes, stereotypes about characteristics of out-group members are used to create expectations about how individuals may respond in a social encounter (Giles and Noels 1997). In other words, the students sometimes approximated their behaviour to accommodate toward a stereotype they had about native English speakers. They did not move toward English girls’ and boys’ actual behaviour, but rather converged their behaviour with that which they believed English girls and boys exhibited (Shepard, et al. 2001). For example, students labelled English girls and boys as more open and enthusiastic than girls and boys in China (see section 6.1). In performing communicative tasks in the research, those compliments that are rare in Chinese discourse were frequently used in English discourse no matter whether they were used appropriately in context, for example, “Oh:: GREAT!”; “I think it is REALLY good”; “You are SO GREAT!”; “I think it is a VERY GREAT idea!”; “It’s VERY interesting and exciting!”; and “That’s VERY good!” On the whole, girls put more effort into imitating the tone, intonation and lexical choices when carrying out the four communicative tasks. It echoed the findings in interviews and focus group discussions, which revealed that more girls than boys showed enthusiasm for experimenting with various ways of performing gender in English. 22

(original Chinese) M13: “៥Ӏ⧁᳝དѯৠᄺ䛑ᤎ୰⃶῵ӓⱘDŽ‫ ڣ‬M11 ህ㒣 ᐌᬙᛣᄺⴔ䇈ˈ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬⡍߿༌ᓴˈᤎ䲒᥹ফⱘDŽ݊ҪⱘҎ䖬དDŽ”

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Several female pairs completed the tasks with a variable tone and intonations. For example, on transcribing the interaction between F5 and F6, observable imitations of pronunciation and choice of vocabulary were found. In later interviews, many students mentioned that one difference between girls and boys in learning English was that girls paid more attention to their oral English. They would try hard to improve their pronunciation, tone and intonation.23 In contrast, boys paid less attention to it. Their aim in learning EFL was more examination-oriented. They consciously or unconsciously devoted more time to traditional science subjects and overlooked English (see section 5.4). As stated by M8 in an interview, as a whole, girls spent more time on English and boys spend more time on science subjects, such as mathematics and physics. In addition, it seems those students who paid close attention to pronunciation and lexical choices were those who indicated their great interest in learning English. Many students showed an essentialist view of gender roles and behaviour (see section 6.1.1). Nevertheless, their claims of eagerness for and actual attempts to perform gender differently in communication revealed that their views are negotiable and can change in the course of learning English. So far we have shown that the majority of students showed eagerness to experiment with different ways of behaving as girls and boys. However, a proportion of students, especially boys showed no interest in it at all. In addition, those students who were eager to and had attempted to behave differently as girls and boys in the Chinese community via the use of English also found their attempts were constrained in several ways. The constraints claimed by these two groups of students in negotiating gender in English will be discussed in the 23

e.g. (original Chinese) F7: “ཇ⫳ϔ㠀䛑Ӯ᳈⊼䞡ষ䇁ϔ⚍ˈӮএ෍‫ݏ‬㞾Ꮕ ⱘ䇁䷇䇁䇗ˈ⬋⫳ⱘ䆱ህᕜᇥӮ⊼ᛣ䖭Ͼ, ҪӀা㽕㗗䆩䖬ৃҹህ㸠”; F7: “Females normally pay more attention to their spoken English. They will try to improve their tone, pronunciation and intonation. Boys seldom do this. They do not care if they can pass examinations”; (Original Chinese) M7: “⬋ཇ⫳ᄺ㣅䇁 Ꮒ߿Ⳍᔧ໻DŽ⬋⫳ᄺ㣅䇁Џ㽕ᰃЎњ㗗䆩ˈᑇᯊ݇⊼ϟ䇁⊩ˈ‫خخ‬㒗дˈ↨ 䕗ᇥ݇⊼䇁䷇䇁䇗ଞП㉏ⱘDŽཇ⫳ⱘ䆱ህӮ᳝ᛣ䆚এ෍‫ݏ‬㞾Ꮕⱘ䇁㿔㸼䖒㛑 ࡯੠Ѹ䰙㛑࡯DŽ”; M7: “There is a big difference between girls and boys in learning English. Boys treat English as a subject they have to learn to pass the exam. They normally pay more attention to grammar and doing some relevant exercises. They do not care too much about pronunciation and intonation. (In contrast) Girls will consciously try to cultivate and improve their ability in oral expression and communication.”

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follow section.

7.4 Constraints students encountered in negotiating gender as EFL learners 7.4.1 Constraints due to the Chinese examination system The widespread saying in China that “one examination determines your whole life” (in Chinese “ϔ㗗ᅮ㒜⫳”), embodies the significance of the UEE in students’ future development. English is one of the three main subjects in which students have to be tested in the examination. Although the NNCET promotes CLT teaching in secondary schools (see section 3.2), the main knowledge being examined in the UEE still focuses on grammar points and the use of words and expressions. As a result, although EFL teachers and school leaders have made efforts to improve EFL teaching to cater for the aims of CLT (see section 4.1.1 and 4.2.1), they have to sacrifice most of their teaching time to teach linguistic knowledge (see section 6.2.2). In such circumstances, some students (more boys than girls) oriented their aim of learning EFL towards passing examination rather than achieving all-round self-development. They spent most of their study time in doing grammar exercise to improve their marks in the examination. For them, learning English and other subjects is the same. Confronted with the question of whether there were any differences between learning English and other subjects, M7 replied, “No difference. Just making notes and doing exercise. For me, there is only a difference between major subjects and associate subject. English, Chinese and mathematics are all major subjects so I spend a similar amount of time on them. After all, I learn them all for examination.”24

In short, M7 treated learning English as the same as learning other major subjects with the aim of getting high marks in the UEE. He made notes 24

(Original Chinese) M7: “≵ऎ߿ˈ䛑ᰃ԰ヨ䆄ˈ‫خ‬㒗дDŽᇍ៥ᴹ䇈ˈা᳝ Џ⾥ࡃ⾥ⱘऎ߿DŽ㣅䇁ˈ䇁᭛ˈ᭄ᄺ䖭ѯ䛑ᰃЏ⾥ˈ᠔ҹ៥㢅ᕫᯊ䯈䛑Ꮒϡ ໮DŽডℷ䛑ᰃЎњ㗗䆩DŽ” In addition, the criterion for dividing major subjects and associate subjects in Chinese schools is whether or not the subject will be assed in the university entrance examination.

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in the EFL class to record important grammar points and use of vocabulary which would be examined in tests. M8 also stated in interview, “At this stage, we are learning English mainly to pass the exams, and we don’t care too much about other things.”25 In other words, it was the examination-oriented aim of learning English made him ignore the other functions of learning English. Learning English means learning language forms and whether it can improve his self-development including his gender awareness and performance was not the thing that he considered. Several other students pointed out that they were ambiguous about the aim of learning English in school. F11 stated in interview, “I learn it for fun. I like learning English. This is the aim of learning English for myself. But (the aim of) learning English in school is certainly different from that. What’s my aim of learning English at school? It seems I myself don’t know either ((laughs gently)).”26

This confusion about the aim of learning English caused students problems in allocating time to do grammar practice and practising communicative skills. Constraints arising from the examination system on students’ improvement in gender awareness as EFL learners are reflected from the following two respects. Firstly, students’ enthusiasm to take part in extra-curricular activities waned due to examination pressure. For example, some students showed no interest in taking part in the school’s annual English Week (see section 4.1.1 for introduction of the English Week). F2 stated in interview, “I didn’t take part in any activity in the English Week. I think it is a waste of time. We have so much homework to do. If I have free time, maybe I will attend. I have taken part in the English Summer Camp in Grade 1.”27

25

(original Chinese) M8: “៥Ӏ⦄೼ᄺ㣅䇁Џ㽕ᰃЎњᑨҬ㗗䆩ˈ݊Ҫⱘ㗗㰥 ህϡ໮њDŽ” 26 (original Chinese) F11: “ህᰃ㾝ᕫད⥽௯DŽ៥୰⃶ᄺд㣅䇁DŽ䖭ᰃ㞾Ꮕᄺ㣅 䇁ⱘⳂⱘ௯DŽ‫ڣ‬೼ᄺ᷵䞠ᄺ㣅䇁ᔧ✊ϡᰃ䖭ḋњDŽད‫ڣ‬೼ᄺ᷵䞠ᄺ㣅䇁ˈ៥ гϡⶹ䘧ҔМ ((ュ))DŽ” 27 (Original Chinese) F2: “៥≵খࡴ㣅䇁਼ⱘ⌏ࡼDŽ಴Ў៥㾝ᕫ䖭Ͼ㳂⌾䌍ᯊ 䯈ⱘ৻DŽ៥Ӏ԰Ϯজ䙷М໮DŽϡ䖛᳝ぎⱘ䆱ˈᑨ䆹Ӯখࡴ৻ˈ಴Ў㣅䇁໣Ҹ 㧹ⱘᯊ‫׭‬খࡴ䖛DŽ”

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In the statement, F2 ascribed her non-participation in English Week to her lack of time to finish homework. If she could guarantee enough time to study in order to perform well in the English examinations, she would probably attend. M7’s attitude was similar to that of F2, “I didn’t attend the English Week. It wasn’t that I don’t have interest in these activities. Sometimes we have no choice. We suffer too much pressure from daily study already. Even though I am interested, it is impossible for me to attend them actively.”28

F3 stated in a more direct way, “I didn’t attend it. I don’t think it has anything to do with me. I even don’t know when it was held. There is already too much homework.”29 Compared to those students who listed the English drama competition in annual English Week as a “key site” for their negotiation of gender performance in English (see section 7.5), these students consciously or unconsciously rejected the opportunity. Secondly, some students, though not many, exhibited an indifferent attitude not only towards English extra-curricular activities, but also to communicative tasks in class due to the examination-oriented learning of English. F3 declared further in interview that it was a waste of time to perform communicative tasks. In her opinion, their ultimate aim as students was to obtain higher marks in an examination which was not going to examine their ability to communicate at all. Hence teachers should just teach grammar and the use of words and expressions in class.30 Guided with such an aim, it was difficult for students like F3 to use English as a tool to achieve all-round self-development. Their awareness of using English to improve gender awareness and adjust gender performance was hence also constrained. To sum up, the more active and positive attitudes students held with regard to learning English, and not only to pass examinations, the more possibilities they would 28

(original Chinese) M7: “៥≵খࡴDŽᛳ݈䍷ᰃᛳ݈䍷DŽԚᰃ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬гᰃ䖿ϡ ᕫᏆ৻DŽᄺдय़࡯໾䞡њDŽህㅫᛳ݈䍷гϡৃ㛑ᕜ⿃ᵕഄখࡴDŽ” 29 (original Chinese) F3: “៥≵᳝খࡴDŽ៥㾝ᕫ䖭Ͼ䎳៥޴Т≵᳝ҔМ݇㋏DŽ ᅗҔМᯊ‫׭‬В㸠៥䛑ϡⶹ䘧DŽ‫خ‬԰Ϯ䛑ᴹϡঞਸ਼DŽ” 30 (original Chinese) F3: “䇒ූϞ䙷ѯ task гᰃᕜ⌾䌍ᯊ䯈DŽ԰Ўᄺ⫳៥Ӏ᳔ ৢⱘⳂᷛϡ䖬ᰃ㽕೼催㗗Ёᣓࠄད៤㒽௯DŽ㗕Ꮬህ䆆䆆䇁⊩ˈ䆡∛ⱘ⫼⊩ህ ৃҹњDŽ”; F3: “Doing tasks in the class is also a waste of time. Being a student, our ultimate aim is to obtain high marks in the UEE. It is enough for teachers to teach only grammar and use of expression and vocabulary.”

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realise regarding the use of learning of EFL as a platform to improve their all-round development, including gender awareness and performance.

7.4.2 Constraints attributable to sense of belonging to the Chinese community Another major constraint students mentioned in negotiating gender in English lay in their sense of belonging to the Chinese community. The social and psychological distance resulting from stereotypical gender representations (see section 6.2) helped to trigger students’ sense of belonging to the mainstream Chinese community. On the one hand, distance is not always negative; it can trigger students’ interest in different ways of enacting gender (see section 7.1), on the other hand, it may inhibit students’ eagerness to experiment with the ways English girls and boys behave with which they were unfamiliar. Some students claimed that there was no need to try different ways of expressing themselves as a boy or a girl. M2 stated in group discussion, “I am not so willing to touch this kind of stuff. I think our own are good enough. They are really different from us.”31 In the statement, M2 used the negative term, “this kind of stuff” to refer to the way he received information about, and constructed, English boys’ behaviour. He ascribed his disinclination to the distance between the ways in which English and Chinese people behaved. In the research, many students frequently emphasised their realisation of their current situation in relation to living in China. F7 explained in interview that although she would like to try the way English girls behave which was different from hers, she would do it in a less exaggerated way because of her life in the Chinese community and she had to consider what others around her thought of her.32 Similar opinions were detected in the following excerpt.

31

(original Chinese) M2: “៥ᇍ䖭ѯᑊϡᰃᕜᛇএ᥹㾺ˈ៥㾝ᕫ៥Ӏ㞾ᏅⱘᏆ 㒣໳དњDŽҪӀ䎳៥ӀⳳⱘᕜϡϔḋњDŽ” 32 (Original Chinese) F7: “ϡӮ໾༌ᓴ৻ˈ↩コ㞾Ꮕⶹ䘧㞾Ꮕ⫳⌏೼ᗢМḋⱘ ⦃๗Ёˈ䖬㽕㗗㰥਼ೈⱘҎᗢḋⳟԴଞDŽ”; F7: “In a less exaggerative way. After all you know what kind of environment you are living in. (You) have to consider what others around you will think of you.”

Students’ Reactions to Gender Representations Original Chinese 1R: 䙷ԴӀӮҹҪӀ䖭⾡㸼䖒㞾Ꮕⱘ ᮍᓣএ㸼䖒㞾Ꮕ৫˛ 2F25: ᑨ䆹ϡ໾Ӯˈ ˄ ˄ュ˅ ˅಴Ў↩コ ៥Ӏ䖬ᰃ↨䕗// 3F21: ៥㾝ᕫ៥Ӏⱘ⼒Ӯད ‫ˈڣ‬䎳ҪӀⳌ↨䖬ϡᰃ䙷Мⱘᓔᬒ 4F25: ҪӀ䙷䞠ⱘ⇨⇯ህᰃ䙷ḋˈ↨ 䕗ᓔᬒ// 5F21: ៥Ӏ䖭䞠াᰃϔϾ⦃๗ˈ↨བ 㣅䇁䇒ූϞDŽߎњ䖭Ͼ䇒ූህϡϔḋ њ

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English Translation 1R: Will you express yourself as they do (in Friends)? 2F25: I don’t think so ((laughing)). Because after all we are quite// 3F21: I think our society compared to theirs is not that open. 4F25: The atmosphere there is like that, quite open// 5F21: All we have here is just an environment, like the English class. It is different when we leave the class.

Excerpt 7-5 In this excerpt, girls pointed out that they would not express themselves in the way that the characters in “Friends” behave. In their opinion, the whole atmosphere of American society was more open and free than that of China. As F21 stated in turn 5 that only in the EFL class was there an atmosphere in which they could speak English and behave “openly” (see section 7.2.2 of the specific characteristics of the EFL class). Once they were outside it, everything went back to its original state. Students’ consequent interruptions in turns 3 and 5 showed their deep agreement about this. In other words, students lacked a wider sociocultural atmosphere which allows them to feel free and comfortable to experiment with different ways of performing gender. Moreover, some students also displayed in discourse their ability to negotiate in order to adapt themselves to different environments. F7 pointed out in interview that the context in which they lived accounted for their behaviour adaptation. If she was now living abroad, she would behave in the way local people behave in order not to be treated as a “foreigner”.33 Faced with the question of how he would cope with those ways of behaving as boys that were different and unfamiliar for him, M7 replied in interview, 33

(original Chinese) F7: “⦃๗䖬ᰃ᳝ᕅડⱘDŽབᵰࠄ೑໪এˈ߿Ҏ䛑䙷ḋˈ Դ㞾ᏅϔϾҎ䖭ḋᄤˈԴ㞾Ꮕ䛑Ӯ㾝ᕫϡдᛃDŽϔ㠀䛑ᰃᇥ᭄᳡Ң໮᭄䖭 ḋ.”; F7: “Environment does have some influences. If you go abroad, all others behave in that way and only you behave in this way, you yourself will feel not at ease. Normally, the minority obeys the majority.”

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Regardless of their simplification by saying they would immerse themselves in a different social community, it showed at least their current membership of the Chinese community constrained their attempts to enact gender in different ways. This embodied a distinction of the current research with those prior studies on gender and SLE focusing on immigrants (see section 1.2.2). Students’ daily activity was mainly mediated by Chinese, not by the target English language, and not by speakers of the TL but by local communities of practice, inside and outside the classroom. As a result, it is fairly difficult for individuals in FL contexts to experience the kinds of identity transformations associated with the naturalistic contexts of adult migrants (Block 2007:6). In other words, the constraints and pressures L2 learners encountered in the local community and in target language community were very different and the space that SLL could provide for them was different as well. On the whole, students in the research genuinely showed evidence a struggle between positioning themselves as girls and boys, able to change and to try to behave differently in English, and as aligned members of the mainstream Chinese community. When they were speaking in English as a foreign language, there was a kind of interference between the actual context seen from the viewpoints of the Chinese society forum and the kind of role they were acting via the medium of English. F24 stated in interview that she wanted to behave as freely as Rachael but she could not help considering others’ viewpoints towards her if she were to do so.35 Even though those girls who were not treated as traditional Chinese girls showed their hesitation due to their worries about discrimination by their peers. For example, F8, an extrovert girl, according to her classmates’ and teachers’ views (see also page 211), thought Rachael should behave in a more reserved way as a

34

(original Chinese) M7: “㽕ᰃ⫳⌏೼៥਼ೈⱘ䆱ˈ៥Ӯ㵡ܹҪӀDŽ↨བ೼㕢 ೑ⱘ䆱៥Ӯ㵡ܹࠄҪӀⱘ⼒Ӯˈ㗠೼Ё೑ⱘ䆱៥Ӯ䗖ᑨЁ೑ⱘԧࠊDŽ” 35 (original Chinese) F24: “៥ᤎᛇ‫ڣ‬ཌྷ䖭ḋⱘˈԚᰃ៥‫خ‬ϡࠄˈᘏϡ㛑ϡ㗗 㰥߿ҎӮᗢМⳟԴDŽ” F24: “I really want to behave like her, but I cannot. It is impossible not to consider how others will look at you (if you do that).”

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girl, although she was F8’s favourite female character.36 Not only girls but also boys mentioned such hesitations. M9 explained in interview that if he behaved in the same way that those male characters did in “Friends”, he would be treated as alien by his peers.37 M8 also stated in interview, “We are Chinese and I think the way we are socialised into being a boy is quite good already.”38 His identity claim to be a Chinese made him crudely exclude the way foreign people behave. In one mixed focus group discussion, when students were asked for their impressions of girls and boys in English countries and whether they were eager to experience the life there, the following arguments were presented: Original Chinese 1F27: ៥㾝ᕫ໪೑䙷ѯ⬋ⱘཇⱘ䛑⡍ ߿ഄᓔᬒˈ᳝ҔМᚙ㒾ህⳈ᥹থ⊘ߎ ᴹњˈ䖭Ͼ䎳៥Ӏ೑‫ݙ‬ऎ߿ᕜ໻DŽ 2R: ԴӀৠᛣ䖭Ͼ㾖⚍৫˛ 3All: ৠᛣʽ 4R: ԴӀ৥ᕔ䖭ḋⱘ⫳⌏৫˛гᏠᳯ 㞾Ꮕ䖭ḋএ㸼⦄৫˛ 5F2: ‫ي‬ᇨӮ৥ᕔϔϟ 6F1: ᇍˈ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬䖬ᰃӮ㽕‫ࠊܟ‬ϔϟⱘ ↩コ䑿䖍ⱘཇ⫳ϡᰃ䖭ḋⱘķ 7F2: ௃DŽ

English Translation 1F27: I think girls and boys in foreign countries are all very open, they let their emotions out no matter what they are. This differs a lot from us in China. 2R: Do you agree with this opinion˛ 3All: Agree! 4R: Are you eager for this type of life? Do you hope that you can behave like this? 5F2: Occasionally (I am) longing for it. 6F1: Yes. But sometimes we need to restraint ourselves a little. After all, girls around us do not behave in that wayķ. 7F2: Yes

Excerpt 7-6 36

(original Chinese) F8: “៥ᤎ୰⃶ཌྷⱘˈԚᰃཌྷ᳝ѯᮍ䴶ϡᰃᕜདDŽཌྷᑨ䆹 㽕᳝ϔѯཇ⫳ⱘֱ⬭ଞˈϡ㽕໾Ⳉ᥹њˈ੉੉DŽ” F8: “I really like her. But she was not perfect. She should behave in a more reserved way as a girl, not too direct, hehe.” 37 (original Chinese) M9: “៥㾝ᕫҪӀ㽕ᰃᛇࠄЁ೑ᴹ⫳⌏ˈ㹿໻ᆊ᠔᥹ফˈ 䙷М↣ϾҎ䛑㽕⿡ᖂᬊᬯϔ⚍⚍DŽབᵰᰃ៥䖭ḋ‫ⱘخ‬䆱ˈ೼ᄺ᷵䞠㚃ᅮӮ㹿 ᔧ԰ᓖ㉏ⱘDŽ”; M9: “I think if they (characters in “Friends”) came to China and wanted to be accepted by others, each of them had to behave more restrained. If I behave in the same way as they do, I would be treated as alien in the school.” 38 (original Chinese) M8: “៥ӀᰃЁ೑ҎDŽ⦄೼៥Ӏ䖭ḋᄤህᤎདⱘњDŽ”

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In the excerpt, both F1 and F2 showed their longing for the way foreign girls behaved but it is only “occasionally”. They explained that because girls around them did not behave in that way, they had to restrain themselves a little in experimenting with different forms of behaviours. In other words, they did not want to be excluded by their peers by behaving too differently from them. In individual interview, F1 explained her opinion further, “Girls in China always follow rules docilely, while they (girls in western countries) are very crazy and will do something unexpected. We Chinese girls sometimes should behave in a less restrained way, but of course, not in an over-exaggerated way.”39

On the one hand, F1 wanted to overcome the traditional behavioural barrier for Chinese girls40; on the other, she asserted her identity as a Chinese girl who should not behave in an over-exaggerated fashion. In short, she was trying to seek for a balance between a popular girl in China and a girl who can behave more openly and freely in the way that she thought girls in western countries did. Such an attempt was displayed in her communication with M1 when performing the four communicative tasks during which she behaved differently from how she was expected to perform. She played the leading role throughout the tasks in an enthusiastic and excited way, but was by no means “over-exaggerated” (see section 8.3.1 for detailed description). In her daily school life, although she actively took part in extra-curricular activities, she kept a certain distance from the boys in order not to be scolded by her classmates for being a very “open” girl. In interviews, her classmates described her as a girl who was very good at English, sometimes even crazy about learning English, but as a whole she kept a low profile and was easy to spend time with (see section 7.2.1). In other words, she succeeded in being acknowledged both as a good second language learner who could behave in the way English girls behave and also as an ideal girl in the eyes of the Chinese community. Several students narrated their experience of being treated as 39

(original Chinese) F1: “៥Ӏ䖭䖍ⱘཇᄽᄤ↨䕗ᕾ㾘䐜ⶽDŽཌྷӀ䙷䖍ᕜ crazyˈӮᑆϔѯ↨䕗ᛣ໪ⱘџᚙDŽ↣Ͼཇⱘ䛑ᕜ᳝⡍⚍DŽ៥Ӏᑇᯊ䆹ᬒⱘᯊ ‫׭‬ህᑨ䆹ᬒˈᔧ✊ৠᯊгϡ㽕໾༌ᓴDŽ” 40 They are used to being nurtured into behaving gently and softly and obeying rules docilely.

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people who behaved like foreigners by their peers. For example, F10 mentioned that she liked watching English films and television series, and imitating the way native speakers speak. Sometimes when she communicated with her friends about the films they had watched recently, they teased her, “You are a betrayer. I am not like you, so open-minded, always watching foreign movies.” 41 In this comment, her friends equated “watching foreign movies” with being “open-minded” and “betraying to her country”. Although they said it jokingly, F10 mentioned that sometimes she was aware of her friends’ unwillingness to talk to her about foreign films. In other words, F10’s sense of belonging to the community that was composed of her peers in class was stifled because of her passion for watching English films as a way of helping her to become a good L2 learner who was trying to behave in the way that native speakers did. Of course, this issue was not as simple as it appears on surface. It was also related to the sociocultural environment of the city where the students lived and the school that they attended (see section 4.1.1). In such a moderately developed city in China, students’ minds and horizons were not as open and broad as those of students from big cities, like Shanghai and Beijing. The way they led their lives was probably more different from that of the foreigners that they are observed in different kinds of media. Their capacity to accept foreign cultures, including various ways of performing gender might also be limited. F15 also told her stories about how she was excluded by her peers because of her “over” passion for speaking English, which caused her to be perceived as a non-ideal Chinese female.

41

(original Chinese) “ԴଞህᰃϾप೑䌐ˈ䇕‫ڣ‬Դ઺ˈᗱᛇ䙷Мᓔᬒˈ໽໽ⳟ 䙷ѯ໪೑⠛МDŽ”

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Original Chinese F15: ҹࠡ೼߱Ё㣅䇁䇒ූϞ↨䕗⠅ থ㿔ˈ‫خ‬ᇍ䆱㒗дⱘᯊ‫׭‬г↨䕗ᬒᕫ ᓔDŽԚᰃᯊ䯈䭓њˈৢᴹ៥ϔ䆆䆱ৠ ᄺህ೼ᮕ䖍௬DŽৢᴹህᰃᑇᯊϟ䇒њ ᳝䎳ҪӀ㘞໽ˈ៪㗙ᰃ‫ي‬ᇨ਀ࠄˈህ ᳝ᕜ໮Ҏᇍ៥೼䇒ූϞ䙷⾡ি௯ህᰃ ϡ୰⃶ˈ✊ৢ催Ёⱘᯊ‫׭‬៥ህሑ䞣ᬊ ᬯϔ⚍DŽ໻ᆊᘏᰃӮ㾝ᕫཇ⫳ᑨ䆹ϡ 㽕໾䯍৻DŽ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬㛥ᄤ䞠‫ߎݦ‬ϔϾ㣅 䇁ऩ䆡ˈԚᰃ៥Ӯ偀Ϟᛇࠄ៥೼䎳Ҫ Ӏ䆆Ё᭛ˈ✊ৢᬊ䖭ḋDŽህᰃᡞཌྷय़ ϟএ⫼Ё᭛㒻㓁䆆ˈ಴Ўϡᰃ⡍߿䙷 Ͼⱘ௯ķˈԴⶹ䘧DŽԚᰃ᳝ⱘᯊ‫⫼׭‬ 㣅᭛䆆ⱘ䆱Ӯ䍞䆆䍞݈༟ˈ੉੉DŽ

English Translation F15: When I was in Junior Middle School, I liked speaking a lot in class. When I was doing dialogue practices, I felt quite free and happy to do that. But after a while, when I started to speak in class, my classmates made catcalls at me. Later, both from my talk with some of my classmates and from their talk that I occasionally overheard, I realised that many of them did not like my active performance in class at all. So when I entered secondary school, I restrained myself a little bit because people always think that girls should not be too ‘noisy’. Sometimes when an English word appears in my mind, I will not say it out loud but just keep talking in Chinese because I realise that I am talking with them in Chinese. Otherwise it will be too much, you knowķ. But sometimes when I keep talking in English, it makes me excited (and can’t stop), hehe.

Excerpt 7-7 F15’s narration in the above excerpt showed that she was not particularly welcome in junior middle school because of her active performance in the English class. She ascribed it to people’s preference for quiet girls. In a sense, criticism of her was about her subject positioning as an L2 learner who was practising English in class, as opposed to a received positioning whose behaviour was expected to conform to the ideal gender norms of her peers. On realising this problem, she tried to respond to what her peers said and restrained herself a little when she entered senior middle school. In other words, F15 let her own identity be both social and personal, shaped by other people. In daily communication with her friends, even though she was sometimes eager to speak English, she would force herself to speak in Chinese to avoid being treated as too “showy”. F7 clearly stated in

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interview that one would be regarded as “playing the peacock” if she code-switched frequently from Chinese to English in daily life.42 In all, F15’s adjustment of her behaviour in and outside the class was designed to gain approval from her peers in terms of being an ideal Chinese girl in school. Joseph (2004) suggests that our own way of speaking may change in response to the judgements people make about us, although we are at the same time making judgements about others. Due to the imbalance of power, F15 was forced to adjust her behaviour and self-positioning with an agreed framework in order to gain access to peer groups. In the excerpt, F15 mentioned that although she consciously restrained herself, sometimes when she was speaking in English, she would get excited and just could not stop. She later explained that what excited her was the feeling of speaking English fluently and expressing her emotions freely in English. In a sense, she was fighting against the socially gendered self (what she was expected to do) when interacting with the “mask” of an L2 learner, although this was not so successful in terms of her peers’ acceptance of her behaviour. In fact, any topic related to English learning would make her very talkative. In the research, she was very talkative both in interviews and in the focus group discussion. For example, in the focus group discussion (an all-female group), F15 was far more talkative than other students in the group. Sometimes, when the researcher was going to move on to the next topic since all other students, including her, had already exchanged their views, she would suddenly say, “Wait a moment” and then go on to clarify her opinion further although some of her stories had nothing to do with the question at all. Other girls in the group showed their antipathy to F15’s talkativeness. Sometimes when she started to speak, other students suddenly became silent. The whole atmosphere made it obvious that the silence was not an indication of attentive listening, but that the other student participants were ignoring F15’s. Moreover, sometimes when F15 indicated her willingness to further explain her opinions, other girls would laugh together as if they knew she would speak at great length. In addition, other students would sometimes together show their disagreement with F15’s views in a direct way. For instance,

42 (original Chinese) F7: “᳝ѯҎ㾝ᕫ㗕ᰃ䖭ḋ‫ߎݦ‬ᴹ޴Ͼ㣅䇁ऩ䆡Ӯ↨䕗 䙷Ͼ♿㗔㞾ᏅDŽ” F7: “some people will think those ones who inserted some English words in daily conversation are playing the peacock.”

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Original Chinese 1R: 䙷៥Ӏ᥹ⴔⳟϟϔϾഎ᱃ 2F15: ㄝϔϟㄝϔϟ˄ ˄݊ҪҎュ˅ ˅ DŽ Ⳉ᥹䇈 ‘You are wrong’ӮϡӮ໾˄ϡ ⼐䉠˅// Î3Others˖ĖҪӀᰃ‫ྍܘ‬௯ ҪӀᰃ‫ྍܘ‬௯!ķ᠔ҹ䖬 ҪӀᰃ‫ྍܘ‬௯ 㸠ଞ ˄ ˄䇁䗳䕗ᖿˈ䇁䇗छ催˅˅ 4F15: བᵰህᰃ᱂䗮ⱘ᳟টਸ਼˛ 5Others˖гϡӮ.

English Translation 1R: Now, let’s look at the next scene. 2F15: Wait a moment, wait a moment ((others laugh)). Isn’t it (impolite) to say ‘you are wrong’ directly// Î3Others: ĖTHEY ARE BROTHER AND SISTER!ķ So it is OK. ((speeding up with raised volume and excited tone)) 4F15: If they were only ordinary friends? 5Others: Still no.

Excerpt 7-8 In the excerpt F15 asked a question about whether it was impolite for Ross to say, “You are wrong”43 to his sister in the scene. Other girls interrupted her abruptly to show their disagreement “ĖTHEY ARE BROTHER AND SISTER!” by speeding up their speech, raising the volume and using an excited and emphatic tone. Later when F15 asked them further about what the situation would be if Ross and Monica were just ordinary friends, they just replied to her briefly, “Still no”, without patience or further consideration. Moreover, when F15 indicated her willingness to comment further in turn 2, the other girls laughed together. According to the way in which the previous conversation developed, this laughter indicated that they knew in advance that she would like to talk more, which embarrassed F15. At the very beginning of the group discussion, although F15 was aware other students’ unfriendly attitude towards her, she still kept talking and elucidated her opinions whenever she wanted to. As shown in this excerpt, although the other girls disagreed with her in an impolite manner (e.g. laughing, abruptly interrupting, ignoring her question), she still kept asking questions. From other abstracts of interactions in this focus group, we can even see that at the very beginning, whenever there was overlapping between her and her peers, she won the floor. However, 43

The scene that F15 wanted to discuss further is about the discussion between Ross and Monica. Monica told Ross that their parents were going to their aunt’s place to celebrate Thanksgiving Day, while Ross did not believe her and said to her, “You are wrong”.

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as time went by, she gradually became more silent and talked far less than at the beginning of the discussion. In conclusion, F15 was forcibly excluded from the peer group and it is the hidden cost of her challenging the traditional gender norms using the “mask” of an L2 learner because the persona she chose for herself in discourse was not recognised and was rejected by the others. In follow-up interviews, some of her classmates mentioned her in negative tones. For example, remarking on their performance in the focus group discussion, F8 stated, “F15 said a lot in the discussion. Whenever she said something about English, she would be really excited. One of my friends is her classmate in junior middle school and at that time I had already heard of her. My friend said something like ‘That one (F15) is really good at English.’”44

The original Chinese word that I translated into “really good” is “ሠ”, which is an informal way of saying “really good” but in a negative tone. It means that although they thought she was good at English, they did not acknowledge it positively. As revealed by F8, although she was good at English, she was too talkative. As a matter of fact, F8 herself was also an extrovert girl. She liked hip-hop dancing very much and was a member of the school hip-hop dancing club. In both interviews and the focus group discussion, she used a lot “fashionable words” which were not particularly elegant and were more frequently used by boys, such as “⠑”(in English it means either “very good” or “very comfortable”) and “ュ⟚њ”(in English it means “so funny that you cannot help laughing loudly”). Furthermore, she also liked English very much and was active in class. In the focus group discussion, other than F15, she was the most talkative girl. However, the other girls treated her differently from F15 in discussion. Whenever she initiated a topic, they would follow her and develop further discussion. What distinguished F8 from F15 was that she knew when to behave enthusiastically and when to keep silent. She was trying to manage the balance between her persona as a bilingual Chinese person and wanting to be acknowledged as a Chinese person who speaks good English, but without people assuming that she was English. This way 44

(original Chinese) F8: “F15 䆆ᕫ↨䕗໮DŽཌྷϔ䆆ࠄ㣅䇁ⱘϰ㽓䛑ᕜ݈༟DŽ ཌྷ䎳៥ৠḠᰃ䙷Ͼ߱Ёৠᄺ৻ˈ䙷ᯊ‫׭‬៥ህ਀䇈䖛ཌྷˈህӮ਀៥ৠḠ䆆ˈ ‘䙷 Ͼ㣅䇁ˈઢਔᕜሠଞ’ ᗢМḋDŽ”

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was also valued by F1 (see page 166). In F1’s terms, F15 lacked the ability to walk the fine line between being an ideal Chinese girl and being a good L2 learner. Hence, although she performed well in both oral and written English examinations and tasks, this did not help her to be a girl who was welcomed by her peers. It also shows that students by no means had easy access to peers. For F8, F15 and F1, it seems that access to their peers was important not only for language learning, but also for social affiliation. F1 and F15 made effective use of their intellectual resources (better English proficiency) to empower them to become acceptable capable girls while F15 did not achieve this. In other words, the reception of F1’s and F15’s intellectual contributions was positive, while that of F15’s was negative. This displays clearly the importance of the interaction between the agency of the learners and the social frameworks in which they exercised that agency (Norton and Toohey 2001). It also made us think what capabilities a good L2 learner should possess alongside linguistic knowledge (see section 9.2 for more discussion). F1’s and F15’s interactional behaviour will be further explored in Chapter 8 to see how they negotiated their social roles as Chinese girls learning English and as Chinese school learners of English when working with boys in tasks, and whether their personal selves conformed with their communicative selves as girls. In addition, data collected in interview indicated that girls may have different constraints from boys when negotiating gender as EFL learners. For example, boys exhibited similar behaviour to that of F15 but did not suffer similar criticism.

Students’ Reactions to Gender Representations Original Chinese 1F7: ⦄೼ࠄ催Ёⱘᯊ‫׭‬Ϟ䇒থ㿔䛑 ᕜᇥЏࡼDŽ݊ᅲЏࡼ≵ҔМϡདⱘˈ Ԛᰃ᳝ѯҎӮ㾝ᕫԴ䖭М⠅⦄ଞᗢМ ḋⱘˈབᵰВ᠟ⱘ䆱Ӯ㹿߿Ҏ䆆ଞᗢ МḋDŽ 2R: 䙷ӮϡӮ䇈ϔϾཇ⫳ᕜ⌏䎗ⱘ 䆱ˈҎᆊӮϡӮ// 3F7: ӮˈӮˈӮ!ķ ˄ ˄䇁䗳ᕜᖿˈ ӮˈӮˈӮ ↿ϡ⢍䈿, ䷇䇗ᦤ催˅ ˅ ˈ䛑᳝䆆ᕫDŽ ݊ᅲ䖭ѯг≵᳝ҔМˈ㸼⦄㞾Ꮕᤎད ⱘDŽԚᰃ┰ᛣ䆚Ёህᰃ㾝ᕫⳟⴔϡᰃ ᕜ㟦᳡DŽ 4R: 䙷Դ㾝ᕫˈ↨བϔϾ⬋⫳ᕜ⠅⦄ˈ ϔϾཇ⫳ᕜ⠅⦄ˈԴ㾝ᕫҎᆊӮऎ߿ ᇍᕙ৫˛ 5F7: ௃ˈ᳝ ᳝ʽĸ⬋⫳⠅⦄ⱘ䆱ϔ㠀ᴹ 䇈ˈ䈵៥Ӏཇ⫳ⳟᕫ䆱ৃ㛑Ӯདϔ⚍DŽ ཇ⫳⠅⦄ⱘ䆱↨䕗ᆍᯧ䙁Ҏॠⱘ䙷 ⾡DŽ 6R:ЎҔМ˛ 7F7:໻ᆊ㾝ᕫཇ⫳௯ᑨ䆹ᅝᅝ䴭䴭ϔ ⚍ˈ৿㪘ϔ⚍ĹDŽ

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English Translation 1F7: Now we are in Senior Middle school, few people answer questions actively in class. Actually, being active is not bad but there will be someone who thinks of you as too showy. If you raise your hand in class to answer questions, others will talk about you. 2R: If it was a girl who is too active, will others// 3F7: YES, YES, YES!ķ((answered without hesitation with volume raised)). (They/we) keep talking about it. Actually, there is nothing wrong in showing yourself. It is just subconsciously you will not like her. 4R: Will they treat girls who show themselves differently from boys who show themselves? 5F7: YES!ĸ Generally speaking, if a boy is showy, we girls will not talk much about him. If it is a girl who is showy, she would easily be disliked by others. 6R: Why? 7F7: People always think that girls should be quiet, reserved and modest Ĺ

Excerpt 7-9 From the above excerpt, we can see that students normally treated those who behave actively in class as “showy” girls or boys. If girls did so, they were more likely to be disliked. In contrast, boys exhibiting similar behaviour were more likely to be accepted. Apparently, F7 had deep feelings about it. She interrupted the researcher’s question in turn 3 by answering, “YES, YES, YES!” immediately with raised volume. In turn 5, her answer, “YES!” was strongly affirmative. F7 ascribed the reason to the traditional culture norms in turn 7 that girls should be quiet, reserved and modest. Since boys were nurtured to be capable males in front of females, they could behave more aggressive. This explained well

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why F15 was excluded from her peers as being too “showy” in English. In this sense, it seems that girls have to overcome more barriers than boys in behaving differently from traditional girls, even when using English as a platform. They had to put a lot of effort into making their peers acknowledge their change in behaviour in terms of their “successful second language learner’ persona, while maintaining their image of ‘ideal Chinese girls”. However, this by no means signified that boys did not experience any constraints in performing differently as ideal males in English. One evident example was the negative effect of stereotypical views of English as a female subject. It made boys pay less attention to English learning, and particularly decreased their awareness of using EFL learning as a useful tool for also thinking think about sociological issues, including gender issues, rather than merely learning the linguistic knowledge (see Chapter 5 and section 6.1). Alignment is one of three modes of belonging to a community of practice, which means aligning one’s actions with the demands of the situation (Wenger 1998). In the research, to continue to belong to the mainstream Chinese social community, girls and boys tried their best to align their practices with the directives they received. They worked hard to maintain this alignment. They were afraid that once their behaviour deviated too much from the idealised gender norms, they would face the risk of being excluded. This alignment, on the one hand, helped them to maintain their membership of the social community psychologically; on the other hand, it distracted socially and psychologically their longing to behave different as able girls and boys. As M13 declared in interview, it was not that he had never thought of trying out different ways of behaving as a boy, but he was afraid of behaving unnaturally and in a way that was unacceptable to the people around him. So he would rather not try.45 In other words, he put himself in a relative vacuum, which disempowered him in terms of being an advanced EFL learner who was required to behave differently on some occasions. It also shows that he put himself in the other participants’ “shoes” in interaction and was more influenced by the position he was sensitive to than to those who were “imagined” in the target language community. 45

(Original Chinese) M13:”݊ᅲгϡᰃᅠܼ≵ᛇ䖛ˈাᰃᗩ䖭ḋ‫خ‬Ӯᕜϡ㞾 ✊ˈ߿Ҏг㾝ᕫᗾᗾⱘˈ䖬ϡབϡ‫خ‬DŽ”; M13: “In fact, I have thought about it (trying out different ways of behaviour), but I am afraid that I will do it unnaturally and other people will feel strange (when they see me do that). (Hence) I would rather not do it.”

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7.4.3 Other constraints claimed by students Some students treated their age as a constraint in terms of experimenting with different gender roles. They stated that the personality of students of their age was almost fixed and it was difficult to be influenced by external factors. They would just do what they normally did. For example, M1 said in group discussion, “We are now secondary school students; everyone’s personality is somewhat fixed, so it is difficult for us to change. Only if we meet some big problems, we might change a little bit.”46

In this statement, he equalled “experimenting with different ways of gender performance’ to ‘changing one’s personality”. Such a misunderstanding caused him to deny that the learning of EFL was a useful tool for improving gender awareness and performance. This declaration was refuted soon by his own statement in interview when he clarified his views on the specific characteristics of the EFL class compared with other classes, “For example, the English class and the Chinese classes are quite different. If foreigners attend our English class, they would feel really bored because what we are learning is just basic linguistic knowledge. They might have a feeling that they are learning English in their own primary school. But in the Chinese class we are having now, the teacher doesn’t teach basic knowledge at all, like grammar and the expressions. Instead, he can teach freely and deliver his own way of thinking to us. It seems that he has already formed his own viewpoints, life philosophy. I was influenced by the Chinese class a lot, both in behaviour and in viewpoints. But not by the English class. It seems, other than learning language points, my ways of thinking and behaving haven’t been affected at all.”47 46

(original Chinese) F1: “៥Ӏ䛑ࠄњ催Ёњ௯ˈ↣ϾҎⱘᗻḐ䛑Ꮖ㒣᳝⚍ᅮ ൟњˈ᠔ҹᕜ䲒Ӯ᳝ᬍবˈ䰸䴲ҹৢ䘛ࠄҔМ໻᣿ᡬଞˈᠡ᳝ৃ㛑এᬍϔϟDŽ” 47 (original Chinese) M1: “↨བ㣅䇁䇒੠䇁᭛䇒ህᕜϡϔḋDŽབᵰ໪೑Ҏᴹ਀ ៥Ӏⱘ㣅䇁䇒ⱘ䆱ˈҪӀ㚃ᅮӮ㾝ᕫᕜ᮴㘞಴Ў៥Ӏ䛑ᰃ೼ᄺϔѯ෎⸔ⶹ 䆚ˈህ‫ڣ‬ҪӀ೼㞾Ꮕ೑ᆊᇣᄺ䇏㣅䇁ϔḋDŽԚᰃ៥Ӏ⦄೼ⱘЁ᭛䇒ˈ㗕Ꮬ෎ ᴀϡ䆆෎⸔ⶹ䆚ˈ‫ڣ‬䇁⊩ଞˈহᄤ㸼䖒ଞDŽҪৃҹ㞾⬅ഄথ᣹ˈᡞ㞾Ꮕⱘᗱ 㓈ᮍᓣӴ䖒㒭៥ӀDŽᛳ㾝ད‫ڣ‬ҪᏆ㒣ᔶ៤њ㞾Ꮕⱘϔ༫Ӌؐ㾖DŽ៥ᑇᯊህᕜ ফ䇁᭛䇒ⱘᕅડ, ᮴䆎ᰃᗱᛇ䖬ᰃ㸠ЎϞDŽԚ㣅䇁䇒䰸њᄺд䇁⊩⚍ˈ៥㞾 Ꮕⱘᗱ㗗ᮍᓣ੠㸠Ўᮍᓣ෎ᴀ≵᳝ফӏԩᕅડDŽ”

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From this statement, on the one hand, we can see that what really affected M1’s using of the EFL class in gender negotiation were the level of his English and the knowledge delivered in class (mainly linguistic knowledge rather than cultural knowledge). On the other hand, his prior declaration that they were at an age at which it was difficult to be influenced by external factors was not the truth since he admitted that he was affected greatly by the Chinese class. Moreover, it was clear from his actual behaviour in performing tasks (see sections 7.3 and 8.3.1), together with his statements in interviews and group discussion, that M1 was affected by English learning in the way that he perceived girls and himself. It was only because he had not yet realised it, that he said he was not influenced. In other words, he displayed a lack of both language and gender awareness in his discourse. The negotiation of gender as EFL learners took place in his life without him knowing it, but it turned out to affect his social life. It was happening and could be used effectively but he was unconscious of it. It is hoped that the findings of the research might make students like M1 become more aware of the role that learning of EFL can play in their all-round self-development, including improvement in their gender awareness and performance adjustment. Another reason indicated by students for their hesitation was their fear of losing “face”. On answering the question about whether she had thought about trying different ways of behaving as a girl, F24 said, “The sticking point is that there is a knot in my heart. Sometimes you really want to try, but you are afraid that you cannot do it well, and then you may be laughed at. It is difficult to untie this knot psychologically.”48




What F24 meant by the knot in her heart was the risk of being laughed at by others if she did not do it well. In other words, she was worried about losing “face”49. This concept of “face” underlies both the social and 48

(original Chinese) F24: “݇䬂ᰃህᰃ᳝Ͼᖗ㒧௯DŽ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬ህᰃԴᛇᰃᕜᛇ এᇱ䆩ˈԚᰃህᰃᗩ㞾Ꮕ‫خ‬ᕫϡདˈህᛳ㾝Ӯ㹿߿Ҏュⱘ䙷⾡ᛳ㾝ˈᖗ䞠ᕜ 䲒‫ܟ‬᳡䙷Ͼ݇DŽ” 49 Goffman (1959:227) defined the concept of “face” as follows: “When a person volunteers a statement or message, however trivial or commonplace, he commits himself and those he addresses, and in a sense places everyone present in jeopardy. By saying something, the speaker opens himself up to the possibility that the intended recipients will affront him by not listening or will think him forward, foolish, or offensive in what he has said. And should he meet with such a reception, he will find himself committed to the necessity of taking face-saving

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psychological aspects of the desire to maintain it (Lee-Wong 2000). Whenever individuals contact each other, either face-to-face or through mediated contact, they tend to act out a pattern of verbal and non-verbal acts whereby they express their views of the situation and through this they evaluate the participants, especially themselves. In other words, “face” is an image of self, delineated in terms of approved social identities (Goffman 1972). Take F15’s experience in group discussion as an example. The other girls’ reactions to her performance were a threat to her “face”, which made her feel awkward (see page 170). Her silence in the later stages of discussion may be regarded as a strategy to maintain her “face” in a sense. Nurtured within the traditional Chinese culture, it was a real challenge for students, especially those introverted ones, to behave in an enthusiastic way. Hence, they needed a relatively “safe” environment in which to conduct these attempts, of which the EFL class is one of the best choices. In the research, students mentioned in detail several key sites in which they can situate themselves in a safer environment and where they could use English as a tool to enact different ways of behaving as girls and boys. The following section deals with this issue.

7.5 Students’ identification of key sites for their negotiation of the gendered self in English Data from interviews and group discussions have indicated that the most likely place that students would attempt to try different ways of performing gender was the EFL class at time when they were carrying out communicative tasks. F4 stated in interview, “When I am doing tasks in English class, I will have a try (of different ways of expressing myself as a girl). Anyway, foreign girls are not as quiet as we are. I like doing all kinds of tasks. They are interesting. I have great space to play around (different roles). In other classes, we don’t have so many chances to communicate.”50

action against them.” 50 (original Chinese) F4: “㣅䇁䇒Ϟ‫خ‬ӏࡵⱘᯊ‫׭‬៥䛑᳝Ӯᇱ䆩ϔϟˈডℷ໪ ೑ཇ⫳ϡ䈵៥Ӏ䙷Мᅝ䴭DŽ៥↨䕗୰⃶‫خ‬䖭⾡৘ᓣ৘ḋⱘӏࡵˈᛳ㾝ᕜད⥽ˈ থ᣹ⱘぎ䯈ᕜ໻ˈ㞾Ꮕৃҹ㸼䖒ഄᕜϡϔḋDŽ݊Ҫ䇒ූህϡϔḋњ, ≵䙷М ໮ⱘᴎӮDŽ”

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Such a statement clarified a specific nature of the EFL class, namely offering students more opportunities to communicate than in other classes (see section 7.2.2). One notable embodiment of gender as a sensitive topic in school lay in the seating arrangement of the class (see section 6.1.1). The communicative tasks in the EFL classroom provided students with opportunities to work with students of opposite sexes either in pairs or in groups of four in a safe environment without others gossiping about them (see section 4.1.2.2). Together with other characteristics of the EFL class, such as the free atmosphere of the class (see section 7.2.2), it became the main site for students’ negotiation of their gendered selves in English. As well as the English class with all its communicative tasks, three other sites were mentioned by students where they felt sufficiently relaxed to try out different ways of enacting gender in English. These were “drama performances in school”, “the dormitory” and “gathering of close friends”. The first one is a relatively public, while the other two are private sites. As a whole, girls took more advantage of the EFL class site and dormitory site, while boys used the drama performance site more successfully. In the research, students frequently mentioned about English drama competition in the school’s annual English Week (see section 4.1.1) and it seems boys used this “key site” more successfully than girls. M15 stated in interview, “Boys are more active in performing English drama (than girls) because it is a totally open stage. You can behave more crazily than you normally do. On this stage, we boys can shout loudly in English. It is impossible to ask us to do so in Chinese because it will be really weird.”51

M4, who took part in the English drama this year, recalled, “It feels really different when I am performing the drama on stage. We can use the lines and body language to express ourselves in an exaggerated way. We are performing in English. Foreigners behave quite openly and crazily. However, it is impossible for us to speak English in that way in daily life. It is easier for us to perform on the drama stage. We are acting out the characters. I like this feeling. Moreover, no one will laugh at you or particularly point out your mistakes in pronunciations or 51

(original Chinese) M15: “⬋⫳খࡴ㣅䇁ⷁ࠻᳈⿃ᵕˈ಴Ў䖭ᰃϔϾᅠܼᓔ ᬒⱘ㟲ৄDŽԴৃҹ㸼⦄ഄ↨Դᑇᯊ༌ᓴᕜ໮DŽ೼㟲ৄϞ៥Ӏ⬋⫳гৃҹᕜ໻ ໄ⫼㣅䇁୞ߎᴹDŽԚԴ䅽៥Ӏ⫼Ё᭛䖭ḋᰃϡ໻ৃ㛑ⱘˈ໾༛ᗾњDŽ”

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expressions, they care more about the entire atmosphere and effect.”52

Both M15’s and M4’s statements indicated that English drama provided them with a “space” where they could speak English more freely and daringly than on other occasions. In M14’s words, they were “acting out the characters”. On the one hand, they could enact roles in a more exaggerated way with the use of the lines and body language. On the other, since they were playing a role on stage, the risk of their pronunciation or grammar mistakes being pointed out was less than when performing tasks in class. What counted most, as M14 stated, was the entire atmosphere and effect on stage. In other words, once on the stage, their situationally salient identity was “actors” rather than “boys” or “second language learners”. One English teacher explained her feelings about the English drama as follows: “There are several things that really surprised me in the drama competition. Firstly, there are several boys in my class who usually keep silent in class but who performed really well in the drama competition this year. I am really surprised about it. One of them even played the role of Miss Gao53. It may be because girls are too reserved to behave as unrestrainedly as boys. It would be quite difficult to ask girls to play a male role. Another surprise is that this time all the actors were boys. There were actually several female roles but students finally chose boys to play these roles. This was really unexpected. Some girls who are good at English may not be daring enough to play drama.”54

In short, what surprised the teacher was that none of the girls participated 52

(original Chinese) M4: “೼㟲ৄϞ㸼ⓨⷁ࠻ᛳ㾝ᕜϡϔḋDŽ៥Ӏৃҹ䗮䖛ৄ 䆡੠㙶ԧ䇁㿔ᕜ༌ᓴഄ㸼⦄㞾ᏅDŽ៥Ӏᰃ೼⫼㣅䇁㸼ⓨDŽ໪೑Ҏ㸠Ў䛑ᰃ↨ 䕗ᓔᬒ੠༌ᓴⱘDŽϡ䖛䅽៥Ӏᑇᯊ⫼㣅䇁䖭ḋএ䇈䆱гᰃϡ໻ৃ㛑ⱘˈ೼㟲 ৄϞӮᆍᯧᕜ໮DŽ៥Ӏᰃ೼ᡂⓨ㾦㡆DŽ៥୰⃶䖭⾡ᛳ㾝DŽ≵᳝ҎӮュ䆱Դˈ гϡӮ᳝Ҏএ⡍߿ᣛߎԴথ䷇㸼䖒Ϟⱘ䫭䇃DŽҪӀ᳈݇⊼ⱘᰃᭈԧᬜᵰ੠⇨ ⇯DŽ” 53 Miss Gao is one character in the drama script. 54 (original Chinese) “䖭⃵ⱘ㣅䇁ⷁ࠻↨䌯㒭њ៥ད޴Ͼᛣ໪DŽ佪‫ܜ‬៥Ӏ⧁Ϟ ޴Ͼᑇᯊ೼㣅䇁䇒Ϟϡ໻䇈䆱ⱘ⬋⫳䖭⃵⫼㣅䇁㸼ⓨഄ䛑ᕜདDŽ䖭⚍៥ᕜᛣ ໪DŽ݊Ё䖬᳝ϔϾডІᡂⓨ催ᇣྤDŽৃ㛑ᰃ಴Ўཇ⫳≵⬋⫳䙷МᬒᕫᓔDŽি ཇ⫳এডІ㸼ⓨህᕜೄ䲒DŽ঺໪ህᰃ䖭⃵៥Ӏ⧁এ㸼ⓨⱘ䛑ᰃ⬋⫳DŽ݊ᅲ䞠 䴶᳝ད޴Ͼ䛑ᰃཇ⫳ⱘ㾦㡆ⱘˈԚҪӀ䖬ᰃ䗝ᢽ䅽⬋⫳ᴹডІᡂⓨDŽ䖭⚍ᕜ ᛣ໪DŽ᳝ѯཇ⫳㣅䇁↨䕗དⱘৃ㛑೼ᡂⓨϞᬒϡᓔˈϡ໳໻㚚DŽ”

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in the drama, although they joined in more actively in class and those boys who used to keep silent in class performed really well on the stage. She ascribed it to the reason that girls were too reserved to behave as unrestrainedly as boys. Students in the research stated another reason, namely, English drama paid more attention to portraying the character through body language. The lines for each actor were not excessive and the requirement for their English language proficiency was not particularly high. As a result, those boys who were not good at English could perform well, as long as they had the ability to act. In contrast to English drama, more girls than boys took part in the English speech competition, which had a higher requirement in terms of English fluency and accuracy. Many students took this as an example in clarifying their views about English as female terrain and the learning differences between girls and boys in English. The third “key site” students mentioned was their school dormitory. Because students live with each other during term times, they know each other intimately and dare to behave as freely as they want in front of each other (see section 4.1.2). Several girls mentioned in interview that they dare not speak English in the EFL class but would speak with their roommates in English in the dormitory. They might read aloud from the textbook, full of emotion in the room and imitating the tone and intonation of native speakers, which they learnt from the textbook tapes or television programmes or films. For example, F3 stated, “I really want to live the way girls lead their lives in ‘Friends’. They can speak loudly and release their feelings out freely. Maybe in the dormitory I will do that, but if there are too many people, I won’t.”55

In other words, they can behave totally differently with their roommates because they feel safe with them. Together with the dormitory site, students also referred to “gatherings of close friends” as another place where they would experiment with different ways of behaving as girls in English. When I asked students whether they would behave differently at home, they all shook their heads. Because boys showed less enthusiasm for learning English, few of them mentioned their experience of speaking English outside the class, including in the dormitory and social 55 (original Chinese) F3: “៥ᤎ৥ᕔ Friends 䞠䴶޴Ͼཇ⫳ⱘ⫳⌏ᮍᓣⱘDŽཌྷ Ӏৃҹ໻ໄ䇈䆱ˈৃҹ㞾⬅ഄথ⊘㞾Ꮕⱘᚙ㒾DŽৃ㛑೼ᆱᅸ៥䖬Ӯএᇱ䆩ϔ ϟˈԚᰃབᵰҎ໾໮ⱘ䆱៥ህϡӮDŽ”

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gatherings with friends. From all the above sites students mentioned where their performance as girls and boys varied, we can see that they were indeed negotiating their multiple aspects of identity as reflected by their various social roles in different social situations. In the EFL class, they either oriented themselves more to the role of an L2 learner or a girl or boy that should obey the school rules. On the drama stage, their primary role was that of an actor who was playing a part in English. In the school dormitory or together with their close friends, they conducted themselves more as girls or boys behaving as freely as possible. At home with parents, their main role was that of good children who should listen to their parents. In short, the safer they felt in an atmosphere, the more possibilities there were for their behaviour as girls and boys to vary.

7.6 Summary To sum up, most students (more girls than boys) participating in the research showed an eagerness to experiment with different ways of performing gender in English. Their discourse showed that the performance of gender is negotiable and changeable in the course of learning English. They claimed two advantages in relation to negotiating gender as EFL learners. One is the use of English as a foreign language in interaction. The other is the specific characteristics of the EFL class compared to other subject classes in not only providing more communicative tasks enabling students to work in pairs or groups of four, but also in its freer and more relaxed classroom atmosphere. Making use of these advantages, they (more girls than boys) attempted in interactions to enact their gendered roles according to what they believed were appropriate English norms. Not all students’ attempts were successful from the perspective of their partners’ reactions in interaction. Some students’ behaviour was treated as “over-accommodating” towards the “template” of English girls’ and boys’ behaviour, which they had extracted from various sources, and was hence rejected by peers. Students’ gender awareness and negotiation as EFL learners was constrained in several ways. One was the examination system in China which caused students to struggle between learning English for examinations and broadening their all-round self-development. Some evidently studied English only for the purpose of mastering linguistic knowledge. They regarded taking part in extra-curricular activities and

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tasks as a waste of time and did not include them in their daily study schedule. The stereotypical and unilateral representations of females’ and males’ behaviour in English countries made students feel socially and psychologically distant from English girls and boys. It also triggered students’ strong sense of belonging to the mainstream Chinese community, which was claimed as another major constraint for their gender negotiation in English. Students frequently made identity claims to be that of Chinese girls or boys in the research. These main constraints also produced as reasons for a small proportion of students’, especially boys’, lack of interest in experimenting with different ways of enacting gender. Some students were also worried about their change of behaviour being considered inappropriate and hence being laughed at by others. They needed a safe environment where they could feel free to make mistakes. Altogether, four key sites were pointed out by students where they felt relatively safe and convenient to perform such role-play without being excluded from the peer group. They are “the EFL class using many communicative tasks”, “the English drama competition”, “the school dormitory” and “gatherings of close friends”. Boys used the second “key site” more successfully than girls, while girls were better able to use the other three “sites” to negotiate their gender performance. Furthermore, their usage of these key sites also reflected their inclination towards different aspects of social identity. The viewpoints and behaviour of several students displayed their awareness of the need to keep a balance between behaving as an ideal Chinese girl or boy and extending oneself as a good second language learner from the Chinese community. Chapter 8 will deal further with the issue of students’ negotiation of their social identity as students learning English or girls and boys learning English by examining their interactive behaviour in both tasks and interviews.

CHAPTER EIGHT GOOD STUDENTS OR GOOD GIRLS/BOYS: NEGOTIATING ROLES

The identities of individuals have multiple aspects, as reflected in their various social roles (see section 2.3), which vary depending on the context, for example, who we interact with and where the interaction takes place (Davies and Harre 1999). It defines the relationship between the participants in interaction. This chapter deals with students’ negotiation of their social roles in discourse as Chinese school girls or boys learning English and as students at school learning English. It explores to which aspects of identity students were drawn in interaction, namely, the situationally salient aspects of their identity and how such an emergent subject position was treated by their partners. Section 8.1 and 8.2 reports relevant findings viewed from a macro-level perspective by analysing interview data on the following two issues: criteria students used to select task partners; students’ willingness to act as group representatives in daily classroom discussions. Section 8.3 investigates four representative cases in the research from a micro-level point of view. It examines in detail the four mixed pairs’ interactions in performing communicative tasks, as well as their rationalisation in interviews of their behaviour and their views on ideal female and male images in focus group discussions. Any dimensions of identity are about positionings by others and self-positionings. They are therefore “co-constructed and simultaneously individual and collective in nature” (Block 2007:42). According to Davies and Harre (1999:37), “Positioning is the discursive processes [both verbal and non-verbal] whereby people are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced storylines.”

A way of speaking in a community does not simply constitute a turning

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on of a community-specific linguistic switch, or the symbolic laying of claim to membership in that community, but a complex articulation of the individual forms of participation in that community with participation in other communities that are salient at the time (Eckert and McConnel-Ginet 1992:470). In the book, discussing students’ self-positioning in interaction does not mean that there are fixed positions A and B, which students at certain moments turning one on by turning the other off. In contrast, it is more a process of orienting themselves more towards A than to B at a certain moment, and vice versa. Weedon (1997) points out that the adoption of subject positions does not take place in a vacuum. In a sense, it is “the ongoing push and pull and give and take of discursive activity” that translates into “the constant positioning and repositioning and the constant definition and redefinition of who one is” (Block 2007:20). Such a complicated interactional move is referred to by Goffman (1974; 1981) as shifts of “footing”. This concept is useful in examining individuals’ signalling of social roles and their self-positioning vis-à-vis one another during interactions (Wine 2008). As argued by Goffman (1981:128), “participant’s alignment, or set, or stance, or posture, or projected self is somehow at issue” and they constantly change their footing over the course of speaking. In other words, changes in footing imply “changes in the alignment participants take upon themselves and the others present as expressed in the way they manage the production or reception of an utterance.” Whenever people say things in social interaction, there are a number of possibilities which are socially feasible. But there is only one which is selected and causes things to advance. In other words, at any moment, when there is a case of a shift in footing, different rights and duties are implicitly implied. It is as if we were all at any moment of interaction open to becoming somebody else. As for the student participants in the research, they could become more of a girl or boy or more of a student at any given moments. To be a good student, an individual primarily becomes a language learner who learns the language well. In a sense, to be a good student means to be a good language learner. For convenience purposes, in the book, I use the terms “good language learner” or “learner role” to refer to students’ social role of being a good student in the school community.

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8.1 Negotiation as reflected in choice of task partner In the research, student participants carried out communicative tasks in pairs with either their deskmate or one of the classmates sitting nearby (see section 4.1.2.2). In follow-up interviews, they were asked, if they themselves could choose, with whom would they want to work, same-sex students or opposite-sex students? Some students replied that they would choose their partner according to the sex, while others primarily took the English ability of the candidates into consideration. F6 stated that she wanted to work with female students because, “When I work with girls, I am more relaxed and talk more freely. In addition, we can also sit really close to each other. Apparently, I can’t do this when working with boys.”1 It reveals that somehow physical proximity to boys for her is “disturbing” in terms of her work and the gender aspect of their identity influences their performance in performing tasks. M7 also declared his preference to work with same-sex students, “Because when we boys are talking with boys, we can keep talking without hesitation. In contrast, when we are working with girls, we have to pay attention to this or that. After all, there are differences between girls and boys. Some topics are not suitable for talking with girls. You won’t feel totally free when talking with them.”2

In this statement, M7 distinguished girls from “we boys” implying that they are two different groups; it made him feel restricted when working together with girls. Opinions of this kind accounting for choosing to work with same-sex students were widespread. Those holding such opinions were indeed aligning themselves more towards the role girls or boys working with the opposite-sex students rather than EFL learners who put the outcome of language learning in first place. In such circumstances, they were constrained by sex differences even though it involved carrying out tasks in the EFL class. Another reason students provided for their choice to work with same sex students lay in peer-group influence. For example, 1

(original Chinese) F6: “䎳ཇ⫳ড়԰ⱘ䆱Ӯ↨䕗ᬒᵒˈ䆆䆱г᳈㞾⬅DŽ㗠Ϩ ៥ӀϸϾ䆆ⱘᯊ‫׭‬䴴ᕫᕜ䖥ⱘˈ੉੉DŽ✊ৢᕜᯢᰒ䎳⬋⫳䖭ѯ‫خ‬ϡࠄDŽ” 2 (original Chinese) M4: “಴Ў៥Ӏ⬋⫳П䯈䆆䆱Ѹ⌕ᰃ≵᳝ӏԩ䖳⒲ⱘˈ䎳 ཇ⫳ⱘ䆱䖬㽕⊼ᛣ䖭⊼ᛣ䙷DŽ㗠Ϩ⬋ཇ⫳↩コ᳝߿৻ˈ᳝ѯ䆱гϡད䆆ˈ↩ コ᢬ᴳˈϡ㞾⬅ⱘᛳ㾝DŽ”

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Original Chinese 1R: བᵰԴ㞾Ꮕৃҹ‫އ‬ᅮˈԴӮ䗝䇕 ‫خ‬ᨁḷˈ⬋⫳䖬ᰃཇ⫳˛ 2F5: ཇ⫳DŽ 3R: ЎҔМ˛ 4F5: 佪‫ܜ‬ᄺ᷵㾘ᅮϡ㛑䎳⬋⫳Ѹᕔ 䖛ᆚˈ੉੉DŽ៥Ӏ㗕Ꮬ䇈ᰃࠡৢḠⱘ 䎱⾏ˈϡ㛑‫ݡ‬䴴䖥њķDŽ䖬᳝ϔϾህ ᰃԴ㽕ᰃ䎳⬋⫳䙷Ͼⱘ䆱ˈᮕ䖍ⱘҎ ህӮᗢМḋᗢМḋᗢМḋDŽఈᏈ໾໻ њˈ໻ఈᏈĸDŽ䎳Դ䆆䙷ѯϰ㽓௯Ĺˈ ফϡњህᰃDŽ㞾Ꮕҹࠡ≵᳝䖭ḋᄤˈ ⦄೼さ✊䖭ḋᄤˈ߿ҎӮ䇈䇊ˈԴϡ ℷᐌDŽ 5R: ᠔ҹԴ᳝ফ䖭⾡ᗱᛇⱘᕅડ˛ 6F5: Ӯˈ੉੉DŽ៥㾝ᕫᑨ䆹᱂䘡䛑Ӯ ৻DŽ៥㾝ᕫህᰃᕜᇥ≵ҎϡӮⱘ৻DŽ

English Translation 1R: If you can decide on your own, who would you choose to work with, girl or boy? 2F5: Girl. 3R: Why? 4F5: First, according to the school rule, boys and girls should not make frequent contact with each other, hehe. Our teachers said the closest distance is the distance between rows. No closerķ. Moreover, if you choose to work with boys, people around you will gossip. Their mouths are too big, big mouthĸ. They will talk to you about that kind of stuffĹ which I cannot bear. I never chose to work with boys by myself before. If I do so now, others will think of us as abnormal. 5R: So you are affected by this opinion (girls and boys should keep a distance between each other)? 6F5: Yes, hehe. I think people are universally influenced by this. In my opinion, almost all people are affected.

Excerpt 8-1 In the excerpt, F5 attributed her choice to work with girls to pressures from school rules and peers. Unless their teachers asked them to carry out tasks in pairs or in groups with opposite-sex students, they would not voluntarily do so. In the excerpt, F5 used the word “big mouth” to describe those who gossiped. In order to avoid being gossiped about, she would rather choose to work with girls. In her opinion, many students would make the same decision as she had since they had similar considerations. Furthermore, F5 told a story in interview about her experience in the previous year’s English drama competition.

Good Students or Good Girls/Boys: Negotiating Roles Original Chinese 1F5: ៥Ϟ⃵ད‫צ‬䳝 ‫צ‬䳝ķଞDŽ Ϟሞⱘ㣅䇁 ‫צ‬䳝 ⷁ࠻௯ˈሙ✊ ሙ✊ĸ੠ϔϾ⬋⫳೼䙷䖍ᥦ ሙ✊ 㟲ˈህ䆆৩Ꮧ੠䉖㴝ⱘᯊ‫ৢˈ׭‬ᴹᴹ њϔϾ㨷ध௯ˈઢਔ䏇㟲DŽ㽕䏇㟲㘊 㽕䏇㟲㘊 Ĺʽ 2R: ЎҔМ‫צ‬䳝ਸ਼ˈЎҔМ⫼þ‫צ‬䳝ÿ 䖭Ͼᄫਸ਼˛ 3F5: ಴Ў៥㾝ᕫˈ಴Ўৃ㛑гᰃ᳝⚍ ᕅડⱘ௯˄ ˄Ӵ㒳ᗱᛇⱘᕅડ˅ ˅DŽ䖭ᰃ 䏇㟲ਔʽĺᑇᯊ䇈䆱гৃҹˈᗢМ䖬 䏇㟲 㽕ᢝᢝ᠟ˈ䏇㟲Ļˈ䖭ḋ໾˖ ໾˖ ˖䙷Ͼњ ˖ ৻ļDŽ㗠Ϩህা᳝៥ӀϸϾৠᄺ೼䙷 䖍䏇㟲௯ˈᢝ᠟DŽ߿ⱘ⬋ཇ⫳ህⳈ᥹ ೼䙷䖍䏇㟲ˈϡ⫼ᢝ᠟ˈ䖭ḋᰃϡᰃ ໾ለሀĽњˈ੉੉DŽ 4R: Դ㾝ᕫᤎለሀⱘ˛ 5F5: ᰃⱘDŽ

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English Translation 1F5: Last time I was very UNLUCKY ķ. In last year’s English drama competition, CAN YOU BELIEVEĸ I had to dance with a boy! It’s (the drama) about the story of Lv Bu, Diao Chan and Dong Zhuo. I had to dance with Dong Zhuo. DANCING! Ĺ 2R: Why do you think it’s unlucky? Why using the word ‘hapless’? 3F5: Because I feel, because maybe I am also influenced ((by traditional viewpoints)). IT IS DANCING! ĺIt is ok to talk with boys but why we have to dance hand in handĻ! It’s TOO:: muchļ. Moreover, only we two were dancing there, hand in hand. Other girls and boys danced, not hand in hand. Isn’t it TOOĺ awkwardĽ, hehe. 4R: You feel awkward? 5F5: Yes.

Excerpt 8-2 In the excerpt, F5 displayed a strong attitude of antipathy towards her experience of dancing with a boy in the English drama competition. In turn 1, she used the word “UNLUCKY” in an emphatic tone with a raised volume to describe the experience. The exclamations she made in turns 1 and 3 provided further examples it: “CAN YOU BELIEVE!”; “DANCING!”;“IT IS DANCING!” and “It’s TOO:: that”. In the excerpt, F5 mentioned “dancing hand in hand” twice. In turn 3, she explained that her feeling of “misfortune” was caused by the influence of traditional gender norms and peer group influence. It showed that what really made her feel awkward was not only dancing with the boy in public, but also hand in hand because other girls and boys did not need to do so. According to traditional Chinese culture, it is improper for men and women to touch each other’s hands when passing objects to each other. A marriage relationship is the necessary condition which determines whether or not the behaviour is appropriate, which is called “nannv

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shoushou buqin” (“⬋ཇᥜফϡ҆”) in Chinese. In other words, at that moment she was positioning herself more as a Chinese girl who should not dance publicly with boys hand in hand rather than as an actress who was playing the dramatic role of Diao Chan3 in English. It was this self-positioning that made her feel embarrassed. This also echoed the phenomenon observed in the study whereby boys were better at using the drama stage as a key site for negotiating gender performance in English than girls because they were less restrained (see section 7.5). Moreover, F5 tended to use ambiguous terms, such as “that kind of stuff” in turn 4 of excerpt 8-1 and “TOO:: much” in turn 3 of excerpt 8-2 to talk about gender issues. In one respect, as a speaker, she was relying on her views being shared by the researcher since we were both being Chinese. She assumed the researcher would understand her without finishing her explanation in an explicit way. In another respect, she treated gender issues as being too sensitive to talk about and she lacked the words to refer to them explicitly. The fact that the researcher who had been socialised in the same Chinese local community as that of the student participants indeed understood her meaning reveals a common Chinese understanding of girls’ and boys’ behaviour. This strategy of using ambiguous terms and unfinished sentences to talk about sensitive issues was widely observed in the research (see also excerpts 6-1, 7-7 and 8-3 for example). Not only girls like F5 but also boys claimed that they were influenced by traditional gender norms and their peer group in terms of their choice of task partners. M1 stated in interview, “If everyone knows that you choose your partner by yourself, then I would choose to work with boys. It is related to your ‘face’. Everybody will make the same choice. If you pick girls as your partner, others will tease you and make fun of you, even though you can actually do the task pretty well with girls, like this time.”4

The main point of the statement was that even though he could cooperate with girls very well as he had experienced in the course of the research, he would rather choose to work with boys in order to avoid being made 3

Diao Chan, Lv Bu and Dong Zhuo are three characters in the drama script. (original Chinese) M1: “໻ᆊ䛑ⶹ䘧ⱘ䆱ˈ䗝⬋⫳DŽ䴶ᄤ݇㋏ˈ໻ᆊ䛑Ӯ䖭 ḋDŽབᵰԴৃҹ䗝ཇ⫳ˈҎᆊህӮ䍋ઘˈ㱑✊ᅲ䰙Ϟ䎳ཇ⫳ড়԰ৃҹ‫خ‬ᕫᕜ དˈ‫ڣ‬䖭⃵ϟᴹDŽ”

4

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fun of and to protect his “face”. In other words, the gender aspect of his identity outweighed the aspect related to his being a language learner when it came to choosing partners. Moreover, it is shown in the research that students at this age seemed to be more sensitive about working with the opposite-sex students. F10 clarified her views about the seating arrangement as follows: “In one respect, it is to avoid puppy love. In another respect, we are growing up and some girls themselves will say that they don’t want to sit with boys. If I could choose, I would also like to work with girls.”5

F10’s statement revealed girls’ own willingness to maintain a distance from boys. Some girls in the research displayed an overt feeling of dislike for boys. For instance, Original Chinese F4: ៥Ӯ䗝ᢽ䎳ཇৠᄺড়԰DŽ៥ϡⶹ 䘧⬋ৠᄺˈ៥㾝ᕫҪӀ↨䕗៤❳ķDŽ ៥㾝ᕫ߱Ёⱘ⬋ৠᄺ䎳ཇৠᄺ䖬ᰃ㳂 ໮݅ৠ⚍DŽ‫ڣ‬៥ҹࠡⱘৠḠᰃϾ⬋ⱘ ௯ˈህᰃ䎳ҪതЙњህӮᖬ䆄Ҫᰃ⬋ ⫳DŽ⦄೼催Ёⱘ⬋⫳ᡞˈህᰃⳟࠄҪ Ӏⱘ䆱ˈህᛳ㾝ҪӀ⡍߿⡍߿ⱘ៤❳ˈ ᗱᛇ↨䕗…˄ ˄‫ذ‬乓ˈᛇ䆡˅ ˅啠啞ĸˈ ੉੉DŽҪӀᑇᯊ䆆ⱘ䛑ᰃཇ⫳ˈ↨䕗 䙷ϾĹDŽ㗠Ϩ⬋⫳ᗱᛇ↨䕗䙷Ͼĺˈ 㒣ᐌᕔᶤѯᮍ䴶ᛇĻˈ✊ৢህᰃ㾝ᕫ ҪӀᑇᯊఏఏજજュⱘ䎳៥Ӏཇ⫳ュ ⱘ㒱ᇍᰃϡϔḋⱘDŽ

English Translation F4: I would choose to work with girls. I don’t know boys. I think they are quite matureķ. I think girls and boys in junior middle school have more similarities. I used to sit with boys in junior middle school. After I sat with him for a while, I even forgot that he was a boy. Now boys in secondary school are really, really mature. Their thoughts are very… ((paused, thinking of proper word)) dirty and filthyĸ, hehe. They always talk about girls. It is quite much (“neige”) Ĺ. Their thoughts are quite much (“neige”) ĺ. They always think of those things Ļ. When they laugh, what they laughed at was absolutely different from our girls’.

Excerpt 8-3

5

(original Chinese) F10: “ϔϾᰃ䰆ℶᮽᘟDŽ䖬᳝ৃ㛑᳝ϔ⚍䭓໻њˈৠᄺП 䯈ህᰃӮ䇈៥ϡ㽕䎳⬋⫳തDŽ㽕ᰃ៥䗝ⱘ䆱䖬ᰃ䎳ཇ⫳ড়԰৻DŽ”

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In F4’s mind, boys in junior middle school, like her previous deskmate were less mature than boys in senior middle school. In the excerpt, F4 paused a while to think of the accurate word to describe boys in senior middle school. She finally picked the word “dirty and filthy” translated from the Chinese word “ 啠 啞 ” which has a strongly derogatory meaning. The following accounts showed that it was because boys always talked about girls which made her think their thoughts were dirty. The ambiguous term “much” which was translated from the Chinese word “䙷Ͼ” showed that she was unable to articulate her attitudes towards issues related to the relationship between girls and boys. Several other students claimed to choose their task partner on the basis of their proficiency in English. F12 said in interview that whether the partner was a girl or boy did not matter according to her criteria. If she could choose on her own, she would select the one who was good at English as her partner in order to help to improve her English6. Such a statement revealed that on choosing the partner, F12 apparently positioned herself more as an L2 learner who wanted to improve her language proficiency through communicating with students who were good at English rather than as a girl who was communicating with a same-sex student or an opposite-sex student. M3 declared that he would prefer to choose to work with girls because in his opinion, girls’ English ability was superior to that of boys.7 In other words, his choice to work with girls was not based purely on gender (i.e. the sex of the partner) but on his beliefs regarding gender (i.e. girls perform better boys in English). Like F12, M3 gave prominence to his identity as an L2 learner and made the gender aspect of his identity, namely, being a boy, secondary when performing English communicative tasks. This choice to work with girls was shared by some other students. F1 in interview stated that in her opinion, the most obvious benefit of arranging for girls to sit with boys was that girls could help the boys to improve their English while boys

6 (original Chinese) F12: “⬋⫳ཇ⫳≵݇㋏ⱘˈ᳔Џ㽕ᰃ㽕䎳㣅䇁∈ᑇད⚍ ⱘˈ䖭ḋ៥ৃҹҢҪ/ཌྷ䙷䞠ᄺࠄϔѯϰ㽓৻DŽ”; F12: “It does not matter whether the partner is a girl or boy. The most important thing is to work with a student who is good at English. Hence, I can learn something from him or her.” 7 (original Chinese) M3: “ཇ⫳৻DŽཇ⫳Ⳍᇍᴹ䇈㣅䇁∈ᑇг↨䕗催ϔ⚍DŽ”; M3: “(I would choose) girls. Girls” English proficiency is generally better than boys.”

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could help girls to improve mathematics and physics.8 It also displayed the stereotypical viewpoints of English as a female subject and mathematics and physics as male subjects (see section 5.4).

8.2 Negotiation as reflected in willingness to act as group representative Students’ negotiation between the gender and student/learner aspects of identity can also be observed from their willingness to act as group representatives. In their daily EFL class, usually after students had completed a task in group of four, the teacher would ask them to nominate a representative of the group to report the main points of their discussion. In interviews, students’ answers to the question about whether they would like to be that representative varied. Some, such as M8, replied that they would make the decision on the basis of their English ability. If their English was the best in the group, they would be glad to be the representative; otherwise, they would prefer others to be the delegate. Such a rationalisation based on English proficiency revealed their emergent subject positioning as EFL learners in carrying out the task. This is also the most common reply from the boy participants in the research. In contrast, some other students took the possible reactions from the peers primarily into consideration. For instance,

8

(original Chinese) F1: “⬋ཇ⫳ത೼ϔ䍋‫خ‬དⱘᮍᓣህᰃ៤㒽ᮍ䴶ˈԴᐂҪ 㸹㣅䇁ˈҪᐂԴ㸹᭄ᄺ⠽⧚DŽ”

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Original Chinese

English Translation

1R: Դᜓᛣᔧ䙷Ͼҷ㸼৫˛ 2F6: ᜓᛣDŽϔ㠀ᣝ៥ⱘᗻḐ䆱ˈ៥ᰃ ϡӮ㞾ᏅЏࡼᦤߎ䅽៥ᴹᔧˈϔ㠀㽕 ᰃҎᆊিⱘˈ䙷៥Ӯᕜ催݈DŽ 3R: Դᰃ䇈ԴⱘᗻḐ↨䕗㹿ࡼϔ⚍˛ 4F6: ϡᰃ㹿ࡼʽķህᰃ䇈៥ᛇ㽕ҷ ϡᰃ㹿ࡼ 㸼ˈԚᰃ៥ϡӮ䆆ߎᴹ៥ᛇ㽕DŽ಴Ў ៥㾝ᕫ៥䖭ḋᄤⱘ䆱ˈᔧҷ㸼ⱘ䆱ৃ 㛑Ӯ䅽߿Ҏᓩ䍋ҔМ䇃ӮDŽ 5R: ᠔ҹԴ㾝ᕫཇ⫳ᑨ䆹㽕ⶰᣕϔ ⚍˛ 6F6: 䙷ϡᰃʽĸ䙷䈵៥ҹࠡϔϾৠ 䙷ϡᰃ ᄺˈཌྷህᰃᕜᬒᕫᓔˈҔМҔМ䛑៥ ᴹᔧ௯ˈԴϡᔧህ៥ᴹᔧ௯ˈԚᰃ៥ 㾝ᕫ៥ᖗ䞠䎳ཌྷӀϡϔḋˈ៥ᰃϡӮ 䖭ḋᄤⱘDŽ 7R: Ԛ䙷Դ㾝ᕫ䙷ḋгᤎདⱘ˛ 8F6: ᇍDŽԚᰃ៥ϡӮ䙷ḋএ‫خ‬

1R: Would you like to be the representative? 2F6: I’d like to. But according to my personality, I would not ask to be the representative voluntarily. If other students in the group asked me to do so, I would be really glad. 3R: You mean, your personality is a little passive˛ 4F6: NOT PASSIVE!ķ I mean I want to be that representative but I would not speak out to say that I want to be. Because I think if I do that, others may misunderstand it. 5R: So you think that girls should be reserved? 6F6: NOT LIKE THAT!ĸI once had a classmate who behaved quite openly. She was very active and always played the representative role. In her opinion, if you do not want to take the role, then I will take it. But I think I am different from her, I would not do that. 7R: But you think behaving in that way was also quite good? 8F6: Yes. But I would not do that.

Excerpt 8-4 In the excerpt, F6 displayed her worry about being treating as a “showy” girl if she volunteered to be the representative. This was what she meant by “others may misunderstand it” in turn 4, as explained later in interview. She took this primarily into consideration instead of her English ability. As a result, although she would be really happy to be the delegate, she would not do it unless others nominated her. In turn 6, F6 demonstrated a strong disapproval of the viewpoint that “girls should be reserved” by the emphatic reply “NOT LIKE THAT!” and the example of one of her female classmates’ behaviour. Although she agreed that the girl’s behaviour as good, she repeated twice that she would not behave in that way. In other words, although she did not support with the

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traditional gender norms, it seems as if she did not have the courage to break them. This was not always the truth as became obvious from other statements in her interview. In the research, F6 showed a strong enthusiasm for learning English (see section 7.3). In the interview, she mentioned that she liked the spoken English class given by the American teacher very much. She particularly recalled one class when she was paired with an introverted boy in carrying out tasks, “Because he is quite introverted, I performed quite actively. When I was speaking English, I spoke very quickly and fluently. It makes you feel very good, hehe ((laughs gently)). I remembered that he asked me, ‘What’s your favourite sport?’ and I was really excited. I talked about basketball and used many gestures. At that time I felt that I was totally immersed in that dialogue.”9

When F6 was describing her performance in discussing the topic of basketball with the boy, her tone was still very excited. It was not because she liked basketball but more because she thought she performed very well in English on that topic and it made her become excited in conversation. In short, the detailed and vivid narration showed that F6 really enjoyed the feeling of communicating with others fluently in English because it displayed her good ability in speaking English. At that moment, she was in fact positioning herself and the boy to a greater extent as two L2 learners conversing in the target language rather than a girl who was talking with a boy and who was expected to behave in a less talkative fashion. In one respect, such a positioning was partly due to her partner’s introvert and taciturn personality. In another respect, it was also because the boy’s English performance (either written or spoken) was far worse than hers as was obvious from their academic records and classroom observation, which gave her the superior status in communication. The account F6 gave in excerpt 8-4 and the story she told in interview evidenced that F6 gave priority to different aspects of her social identity (either the gender or the L2 learner aspect) in different 9

(original Chinese) F6: “಴ЎҪᕜ‫ݙ‬৥ˈ᠔ҹ៥‫خ‬ᕫ↨䕗⌏䎗DŽ೼䆆㣅䇁ⱘ ᯊ‫׭‬㞾Ꮕ䆆ᕫᕜᖿˈ↨䕗⌕߽ˈ᳝⚍䇁ᛳⱘᛳ㾝ˈ੉੉˄ ˄ュ˅˅DŽ៥䆄ᕫҪ 䯂៥ ‘what’s your favourite sports’ˈ៥ህᕜ݈༟ˈ䆆 basketballˈ✊ৢ䖍䆆䖍 ‫خ‬᠟࢓ˈ䙷ᯊ‫׭‬㾝ᕫ㞾Ꮕᅠܼ㵡ܹࠄ䖭Ͼᇍ䆱ЁϔḋDŽ”

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contexts with the change of interlocutors. Moreover, F6’s claim that she would never behave actively in communication was not always true. Her experience of working with the boy in the oral class verified the fact that she had behaved in a way which she thought she would never do. More importantly, she really enjoyed such an experience which gave her confidence in speaking English. It was only because she did not realise that she had tried out different ways of behaving as a girl with the “mask” of L2 learner that made her speak so affirmatively in turn 8 of excerpt 8-4. Once her awareness of such behaviour was consciously invoked, the constraint resulting from traditional gender norms might have been mitigated. She might volunteer to act as the group representative without waiting for others’ invitation. In all, it seems that more boys took English ability primarily into consideration when deciding whether or not to be the group representative. They seemed to suffer less pressure since they had been culturally entrusted with the responsibility to stand out and speak in public. Hence, what they considered to be more important was whether their English ability was competent enough for the role. In contrast, girls cared more about others’ impressions of their behaviour. It seems that they were more constrained by traditional gender norms even in performing English tasks (see also section 7.4.3). There were several other places where students’ orientation towards either the gender aspect or student/learner aspect of identity was exhibited in the data. For example,

Good Students or Good Girls/Boys: Negotiating Roles Original Chinese R: 䙷Դ᳝≵᳝㾝ᕫཇ⫳ᑨ䆹ᰃᗢМ ḋϔϾᔶ䈵˛ F5: 催ϔ߮䖯ᴹⱘᯊ‫ˈ׭‬಴Ў㗗䖯ᴹ ⱘᯊ‫׭‬ᕜདˈ✊ৢさ✊䯈䗖ᑨϡњњˈ ៤㒽ϟ䰡њˈདӸᖗଞˈ✊ৢ៥ᛇ㱑 ✊៤㒽ϟ䰡њˈԚᰃ៥㽕೼݊Ҫᮍ䴶 㸼⦄㞾Ꮕ௯ˈ᠔ҹህᕜ⊼䞡㞾Ꮕⱘᔶ 䈵৻ķDŽৢᴹࠄ催ѠПৢ௯ˈ៤㒽᳝ њ䖯ℹˈг㳂〇ᅮⱘњˈ㳂དⱘˈ✊ ৢᔶ䈵ϡ乒ˈϡㅵᅗњDŽ៥া㽕ᡧԣ ៥ⱘ៤㒽DŽ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬ᕜ໮໽≵⋫༈њଞ П㉏ⱘˈ䛑ϡㅵᅗњĸDŽ

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English Translation R: Then do you think that girls should present a certain image? F5: When I first entered the school, in Grade 1, I could not adapt to the life here and my academic performance dropped. I felt really sad about it because I entered this school with really high marks. Then I told myself since my marks dropped, I should reveal myself in other aspects. Hence, I started to pay great attention to my visual appearanceķ. Later when I entered Grade 2, my academic performance improved and has remained stable. I don’t care about my visual appearance any more. I only need to improve my academic performance. Sometimes I did not wash my hair for several days but I did not care about it anymoreĸ.

Excerpt 8-5 As stated in the above excerpt, F5 shifted her attention from improving her academic performance to her visual appearance back and forth with the changes in her academic performance. She was adjusting her self-positioning to the appropriateness of the situation in relation to her goals. When her marks dropped, she started to pay great attention to her visual appearance in order to present herself as a good-looking girl. Once her examination results improved, she shifted her attention back to studying hard while ignoring the visual appearance. On the whole, she undoubtedly cared more about herself as a school student whose main goal was to improve her academic performance. It was observable in the research that in spite of the embedding of traditional gender roles in students’ gender performance, girls were as oriented towards academic success as boys were and were as likely to do well as boys.

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8.3 Study of three representative cases in the research The way students constructed and negotiated their gender identity was a complex and dynamic process. Students oriented themselves towards different aspects of social identity within different contexts. As Joseph (2004) argues, we position ourselves and are positioned differently within different forms of discourse, depending on the power and resources that we have at hand. The above section of the chapter reported students’ alignment to either their student role or gendered role as “good Chinese girls or boys” from a macro point of view. In this section, a more micro-level perspective is taken to examine the complexity of their negotiation of different aspects of identity in performing communicative tasks. When opposite-sex students were working together in carrying out communicative tasks, the multiple aspects of their identity as Chinese school girls or boys learning English and as school learners of English could be signalled simultaneously. Interactive data from three female-male pairs will be explored further. They were selected to be analysed here as representative of the selected pairs in the study who displayed a clear shift of footing in the communication. Both extroverted and introverted students, who were learning English for examination and for further self-development, were involved in the three pairs. In addition, students’ performances in interviews and focus group discussions were also taken into account in selecting the three pairs. Those who held strong views, such as F15, whose opinions polarised the roles being a student and a good girl several times, were targeted in order to see whether the personal selves they tried to project in interview and group discussion conformed to the communicative selves enacted in the course of communication. In short, the aims of examining these three pairs were to discover how individual girls and boys took on different aspects of identity in interaction and whether their emergent self-positioning was accepted by the partner and how it affected their performance. It is only when individuals’ positionings of selves are acknowledged by others that they succeed in negotiating their identity.

8.3.1 Case F1-M1 Associated with a context-sensitive approach to the research, although individuals’ gender identity could not be fully understood as an

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individual attribute, their own background information needed to be explored to explain the process of gender negotiation in interaction (Joseph 2004). Firstly, according to the school examination records, both F1 and M1 were good at English. F1 was ranked fifth of the whole grade in the end-of-term English examination and M1 was ranked tenth. However, according to interviews with their English teacher and classmates, and daily observations of the EFL class and extra-curricular activities, F1’s spoken English was better than that of M1. Moreover, F1 displayed more enthusiasm in learning English than M1 in interview. She mentioned in interview that she used to watch English television series and films and read English novels at home in the summer and winter vacations. In her opinion, learning English was not only to pass exams but was also a way of enriching one’s personal emotions and feelings (see section 7.1). In contrast, M1’s motivation to learn English was more examination-oriented. In addition, F1 was more active than M1 in participation in extra-curricular activities. She had taken part in the school English Speech Competition in the past two years and won second Prize. In short, although their results in examinations, which mainly test grammatical knowledge, were similar, F1’s general ability in English was better than that of M1. M1 acknowledged in interview that he thought F1 was better than him in English. Secondly, as far as their temperaments were concerned, F1 was on the whole a jolly and extroverted girl. Although she was not an “ideal” Chinese girl from the traditional cultural perspective, she gave the impression that she was trying to seek a balance between behaving as an ideal girl in China and as a girl who could behave more freely and daringly in the way that she thought foreigners behaved using the mask of “good language learner” (see sections 7.3 and 7.4.2). According to interviews, focus group discussion and daily observation, M1 was a “conventional” boy who liked girls that matched the culturally-idealised “model” (see section 5.3). His disposition was neither introverted nor extroverted. Although he did not take part in as many extra-curricular activities as F1, he participated actively in class in answering questions. Because he was good at mathematics, physics and chemistry, many of his classmates would seek help from him in doing exercises. Both F1 and M1 were members of the class leader committee. Thirdly, according to the headteacher’s introduction and information from daily conversation with them, F1 and M1 shared similar family backgrounds. Both their mothers were housewives. F1’s father was a doctor and M1’s father was an official working for the government. Both of them had been brought

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up in the city centre and were the only children in their families. They studied in a same junior middle school before entering this school. In the course of carrying out the four communicative tasks, F1 overtly played the leading role in interaction from the perspectives of “initiating topics”, “interrupting” and “achieving agreement”. Take the phenomenon of interruptions for example, F1 interrupted M1 frequently throughout the conversation by offering him clues to help him to develop the topic. For instance, 1F1: But I ALWAYS think you are very POWERFUL! ((excited tone)) 2M1: ((laughing)) Ohoh wa ((keeps laughing)) 3F1: And our classmates also think so. 4M1: Thank you! Thank you! ((M laughing while speaking, then both of them laughed together)) 5M1: But…but = Î6F1: this time 7M1: =But I think I can … I can= Î8F1: do better, Ėyes? Î9M1: Maybe can do better next time but I think this time I am not careful enough and… and… I…you know I get good results the first exam this term= 10F1: ĖYes ((shows her attention)) 11M1: =But after that exam I …I feel very hard = 12F1: ĖYes ((smiles gently)) 13M1: =Maybe I feel it’s very cool. And … but … but then I didn’t devote myself to my study and I …I = Î14F1: fell behind ((smiles gently)) Î15M1: = Yeah, yeah, yeah

Excerpt 8-6 In this excerpt, F1 interrupted M1 five times in the form of adjacent utterances, namely, the second being latched immediately to the first without overlapping it. In turn 6, detecting M1’s hesitation in turn 5, “But…but”, F1 took the floor immediately by saying, “This time” to give him a direction and to help the conversation to continue. On the one hand, it was a type of interruption. On the other hand, the function of interruption, the illocutionary act of F1’s speech was to show rapport by giving the floor back to M1. Later, when M1 hesitated again in turn 7, F1 offered him help in the same way. The word “Ėyes” in a rising tone in turn 8 suggested such an intention. Again, in turn 14, F1 aided M1 by

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giving him a clue about the topic “fell behind”. The two “ĖYes” in turns 10 and 12 indicated F1’s awareness of M1’s speech and her encouragement of him; this at the same time displayed F1’s communication skills as an attentive listener and interlocutor. In short, the aim of interruptions in this excerpt led by F1 was not to show her dominance of the floor but to show her rapport with M1 by helping him to express himself better. It thereby helped the conversation to move on successfully. M1’s expression in turn 9, “Maybe do better next time” showed his acceptance of F1’s help by following her ways of thinking. He changed “this time” in turn 6 to “next time”, accepted directly the hint “do better” in turn 8, and integrated these two in turn 9. His agreement in turn 15, “Yeah, yeah, yeah” was another way of exhibiting his acceptance of F1’s help in turn 14. Moreover, non-verbal interactions in the excerpt indicated that things were going well between M1 and F1 and they were interacting well. When M1 laughed in turn 4, F1 joined in later. The laughter apparently showed that they felt no embarrassment. F1’s gentle smile in turns 12 and 14 also proclaimed the harmonious atmosphere of the interaction between the two. In other words, although there were frequent interruptions, F1 and M1 were cooperating to the best of their ability. They were acting in different roles, in a different capacity. Such kinds of interruption and acceptance were widely observed throughout the interactions between F1 and M1 in completing the tasks. In task follow-up interview, F1 answered the question about whether the tasks were too hard for them as follows: “No, they are not. We know what to discuss although sometimes we don’t know the English expression for it. We will remind each other to make the conversation go on.”10

It showed that the reason for F1 taking the initiative to offer help to M1 was because she thought M1 did not know the exact English word to express his meaning. In other words, it was with the aim of completing the tasks smoothly that made F1 interrupt M1 a lot. In performing the task, F1 positioned both herself and M1 as two EFL learners who were carrying out tasks together. She used the learner/student aspect of her identity as the situationally salient aspect and gave more importance to the conversation continuing rather than issues related to gender. Such an emergent subject position was accepted by M1 because of the harmonious atmosphere and confirmed in M1’s feedback in the follow-up interview.
10

(original Chinese) F1: “䙷‫≵צ‬᳝ˈ៥Ӏϔ㠀Ӯᛇࠄ㽕䆆ҔМˈ‫ي‬ᇨϡⶹ䘧 㣅䇁ᗢМ䇈ⱘᯊ‫ˈ׭‬᳔໮гህᰃᦤ⼎ϔϟህৃҹ᥹ⴔ‫خ‬њDŽ”

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In task follow-up interview, M1 described his experience of carrying out communicative tasks with F1 as follows: Original Chinese

English Translation

1R1: 䖭⃵㣅䇁ӏࡵ‫خ‬ϟᴹᛳ㾝ᗢМ ḋ˛ 2M1: ཌྷⱘᏺࡼᗻ↨䕗དˈᛳ㾝↨䕗 དDŽ 3R: ҔМিᏺࡼᗻ↨䕗ད˛ 4M1: ཌྷ㛑ᏺⴔԴখϢࠄᇍ䆱ЁএDŽ Џ㽕ᰃཌྷথ㿔௯ˈ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬៥䆆ϡߎˈ ཌྷህӮᦤ⼎ϔϟˈᏺϔϟˈ✊ৢ៥ህ 䎳ⴔҪ䆆ˈᏂϡ໮DŽ䈵ཌྷ↨䕗Ӯ䆆ˈ ✊ৢ㛑ᏺࡼ䍋ᴹDŽཌྷⶹ䘧ⱘϰ㽓ད‫ڣ‬ 㳂໮ⱘDŽ㣅䇁㸼䖒㛑࡯↨៥དˈ᠔ҹ ‫خ‬ϟᴹᛳ㾝ᕜ乎ˈᕜདDŽ

1R1: What’s your feeling of doing the tasks? 2M1: She is good at leading the conversation. I feel quite good. 3R: What do you mean by good at leading? 4M1: She is good at leading you and making you get involved. She talked more than me. Sometimes when I paused, didn’t know what or how to say something, she would give me hints and make me go on. I would then follow hers. She was quite talkative and could make you get involved in the talk. It seems that she knows a lot. Her oral English is better than mine. So I feel we did the task smoothly, very well.

Excerpt 8-7 Statements in the above excerpt show that M1 greatly enjoyed the experience of working with F1. He very much appreciated F1’s leading role in conversation because F1 took advantage of her oral English to help him when he encountered problems in expressing his meaning in English. It made him feel that they did the task smoothly. In interview and focus group discussions, M1 mentioned that boys should behave like men, be powerful and capable and girls he liked should be weak and tender (see sections 5.2 and 5.3). Apparently, F1’s leading role and his acceptance of her role in the conversation conformed with neither the ideal female nor male images in his mind. In a sense, instead of positioning himself as a boy who was talking to a girl and should traditionally behave more capably than the girl, M1 viewed both himself and F1 more as L2s learner who were conducting tasks in English. Such a positioning made him feel at ease and comfortable when working with a girl whose English was better than his. This conformed with F1’s position discussed above. In other words, their situational positioning of themselves and the partner were within an agreed framework.

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In interview, M1 once explained the role of the EFL teacher as that of offering them help when they met with problems, either in speaking or writing. Teachers should make them get involved in class and trigger their interest in learning English.11 From this perspective, in the process of performing tasks, F1 was more like a teacher and M1 was more like a student who learnt a great deal by conversing with her. As a result, he appreciated F1’s help and did not regard her leading role as the aggressive or improper behaviour that an ideal Chinese girl should avoid. However, by saying M1 or F1 both positioned themselves more as L2 learners by no means indicates that they did not realise that they were carrying out tasks with a student of the opposite sex. For example, in the task follow-up interview, F1 stated, “When talking with a boy, you will restrain yourself a little bit. We should not give them a bad impression.”12 This was why although she interrupted M1 at times, she did so in a relatively gentle way and with the aim of giving M1 hints in order to keep the conversation going on rather than deliberately to seize the floor. This conformed to her previous “balance claim” (see section 7.4.2). This to a great extent made her leading role less aggressive and more acceptable. In performing decision-making tasks, they achieved agreement easily by F1 providing the suggestion and M1 accepting it without further debate. For instance,

11

(original Chinese) M1: “㗕Ꮬᑨ䆹㽕ᐂ៥Ӏ㾷ㄨ⭥䲒ˈϡㅵᰃ೼䇈Ϟ䖬ᰃ‫ݭ‬ ϞDŽ೼䇒ූϞҪӀᑨ䆹㽕ᡞ៥Ӏᏺࡼ䍋ᴹˈᡞ៥Ӏᄺд㣅䇁ⱘ⿃ᵕᗻг㽕ᏺ ࡼ䍋ᴹDŽ”; M1: “the teacher should offer us help when we meet problems either in speaking or in writing. They should make us get involved in class and trigger our interest in learning English.” 12 (original Chinese) F1: “䎳⬋⫳䆆ᕫ䆱Ӯ⿡ᖂ᳝ϔ⚍᥻ࠊⱘDŽ ϡ㛑⬭ϟϔ Ͼϡདⱘॄ䈵ˈ੉੉DŽ”

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1F1: What activities are you going to organise if you will hold this party? 2M1: I think...er...I think...like we, always do. Singing. Î3F1: ĖDancing? Î4M1: ĖDancing, yeah= 5F1: =Yeah= 6M1:= And, and our teachers must come. Î7F1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. With their husband or wife Î8M1: Yeah, yeah. And they will have more ...= 9F1: HAPPY Î10M1: Yeah, yeah= 11F1: =With their husband. And I think it's important to let our classmates enjoy it= Î12M1: =Yeah. 13F1: For example, every teams will organise...er...er…activities. Every teams, like four people or eight people 14M1: Oh 15F1: Then they can perform it to all of us. Î16M1: Oh, ok, ok. 17F1: And it's important to prepare some gifts. Do you think so? Î18M1: Yeah, I like it, hehe ((laughing together)) 19F1: What gifts will you prepare?

Excerpt 8-8 In the above excerpt, F1 and M1 were carrying out the task of organising a Christmas party for the whole class. As shown in the excerpt, F1 was the one who played the role of providing suggestions for possible activities to be organised for the party (e.g. suggesting dancing in turn 3, teachers coming with husbands or wives in turn 7, organising activities in teams in turn 13 and preparing gifts for attendees in turn 17). In contrast, M1 seldom advanced new suggestions, except in turn 6. On most occasions, he just showed agreement with F1 by following her suggestions, such as “Yeah, yeah” in turn 10, “Oh, ok, ok” in turn 16 and “Yeah, I like it” in turn 18. Reasons for such a phenomenon are multifaceted. In the follow-up interview, M1 mentioned that F1 had some experience of organising parties for the whole class. If he thought her suggestion was acceptable, he would follow it without further argument, even though he had a better idea. In interview, when M1 was faced with the question, if he was working with a boy who was also experienced in organising parties,

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would he have followed his suggestions as easily as he did with F1, he replied, “In that case, I would argue with him if I had better ideas.”13 In other words, F1’s previous experience in organising parties was not the only reason for M1’s consistent agreement. According to daily observation, M1 was not the kind of student who did not have a mind of his own. Furthermore, in this excerpt, M1 only paused once in turn 8 after which F1 provided immediate help in turn 9 by saying “HAPPY” as a clue. It showed that M1’s lack of vocabulary might have been one of the reasons but not the main one. All these revealed M1’s realisation that working with F1, who was not only an EFL learner, but also a girl, counted more for his agreement behaviour to F1. In other words, at the moment, the gender aspect of their social identity emerged and momentarily took precedence over the student/learner aspect. Hence, M1 tried to avoid arguing with F1 if it was not necessary. This also explained the phenomenon observed when they were performing the other decision-making task to do with celebrating Father’s day and Mother’s day. Although neither of them had experienced the celebration of the festivals for their parents before, F1 still led the discussions of the topic and M1 obediently showed agreement with her suggestion. To sum up, in performing the tasks, it was not that M1 and F1 turned on their social identity as a language learner by turning off their identities as a boy and girl. Rather, they were giving precedence to the student aspect of their identities temporarily. M1 constantly shifted his “footing” by prioritising either the student/learner or gender aspects of identity to better accommodate to the aim of communication (whether to improve English or to maintain a good male impression in front of a girl). Similarly, although F1 positioned herself more as an L2 learner, she did not forget that she was carrying out tasks with a boy. Such a boy-girl pair-grouping created an opportunity whereby gender and learner/student aspect came up against each other. It gave them an opportunity to hold discussion in English which was Chinese gender-independent. They were in a sense rediscovering each other on another level where F1 happened to be more competent at this particular activity at that time. This was an activity where she could be cooperative and give M1 the benefit of her knowledge, and he did not resent it because he was learning. In other words, the communicative tasks in the EFL classroom provided a kind of holding situation where they could experience a relationship through the medium of another language and where they could discover other selves 13

(original Chinese) M1: “䙷Ӯѝϔϟⱘˈབᵰ៥㾝ᕫ៥᳝᳈དⱘᛇ⊩DŽ”

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or other people. The EFL class from this perspective was like a safe interactional environment in which F1 could behave differently from how people normally expected a girl to do in China, without being blamed or excluded by her peers. In short, learning English in this particular pair seemed to be an empowering experience for F1in terms of showing herself to be both a good L2 learner and an able Chinese girl in the community without being rejected by M1. It shows that sometimes the tendency to allocate power in relation to traditional categories, like gender, can easily be overturned based on proficiency of the target language. Learning English and performing communicative tasks in the classroom provide students with situations where the traditional expectations concerning their gendered behaviour can be changed. However, good ability in English does not always seem to empower girls as competent language learners without losing the persona of an ideal Chinese girl. In the following section, F15’s experience with M15 in carrying out the tasks will be expounded in detail.

8.3.2 Case F15-M15 Both F15 and M15 were born into intellectual families. F15’s father was an officer at the local police station and her mother worked in a state bank. M15’s father was an official in the local government and his mother was a secondary school teacher. They were both the only children in their families. F15 loved learning English. According to the interview with her teacher and classmates, as well as the daily observation, she did well in both written and spoken English. Among the 26 male participants in the research, M15 was the only one who paid great attention to spoken English. Both F15 and M15 were talkative and extroverted students. They were active both inside and outside the class and took part in many extra-curricular English activities. They presided together over this year’s English speech competition in English Week (see section 4.1.1). In addition, both of them were members of the school student union, which provided them with some opportunities to work together. They mentioned in interviews that frequently they spoke to each other in English in their free time to practise their oral English. For both of them, the purpose of learning English was not only for passing exams but also for self-development. On the whole, F15’s general English ability was better than that of

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M15. She ranked the sixth in the whole grade in the end-of-term English examination and M15 ranked eleventh. According to their performance in carrying out communicative tasks, both F15 and M15 were good at using everyday English expressions. They treated the tasks not just as exercises in class but more as daily conversation. Their tone and intonation varied according to the emotions being expressed. However, M15’s vocabulary was obviously not as abundant as that of F15. In such circumstances, M15 still dominated the conversation from the perspective of initiating topics, interrupting and speech length. For example, one of the most significant phenomena in this pair’s interaction was M15’s frequent and abrupt interruption of F15’s speech: 1F15: Now I think the maths we are learn now…we have to learn maths more. 2M15: Don’t you know before? 3F15: no. You know// Î4M15: I think it’s NORMAL ((surprised tone)). I think it’s a basic thing that we should know. 5F15: No, I don’t know, no one has told me. And // 6M15: So what subject that you pay most attention? 7F15: Er, it depends. I have to make up my weak subject, like now the political science, so I will spend// 8M15: Yes, so did I 9F15: We have something in common then. And I will spend more time in the following day. And I hope now, before we end the Grade Three I will make all of my subject very familiar and quite high on the average level. 10M15: Erhe ((sign of listening)) 11F15: So, I don’t know, and in fact before I enter this class, I know that maths is very important. But it seems the maths is REALLY simple, more simple// Î12M15: You are CRAZY, you Ĺknow!! 13F15: You know// Î14M15: It’s ĹINCREDIBLE, you know.

Excerpt 8-9 In this excerpt, M15 abruptly interrupted F15 five times in all. The aim of his interruption was not to show his rapport or give hints to F15 but to take the floor to express his ideas. It differed from the interruptions F1 made with M1 in their interaction since her aim was to help M1 to move on in the conversation. In turns 4 and 8, M15 forcibly

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took the floor for himself without waiting for F15 to finish what she was saying first, which was impolite in a sense. In turn 6, he interrupted F15 by raising a new question for F15, which apparently was not what F15 wanted to develop in turn 5. In turn 14, he commented on F15’s viewpoint calling it “CRAZY”, emphatically raising his volume and using a tone of disbelief. Later, he interrupted F15 again in turn 14 without giving her a chance to explain and used the emphatic word “INCREDIBLE” to comment on her statement in turn 11. Both the lexical choice of “crazy” and “incredible” and the associated paralinguistic features showed that such interruptions were not only impolite, but also face-threatening. Similar situations occurred everywhere in their interactions. For instance, in carrying out the task of organising a Christmas party, when F15 suggested that they might need some delicious food for the party, M15 laughed at her by saying, “You always say something to eat”. Later, after she explained the necessity of preparing food for the party, M15’s reply was, “But I think it’s incredible that your first thought is food”. In all, M15 laughed at F15 five times throughout the conversation on preparing food for the party. Such feedback threatened F15 with loss of “face”. In contrast with M15, F15 rarely interrupted him. Whenever overlapping occurred, she would let M15 finish what he wanted to say first. This was also the main reason for M15 frequently winning in overlapping in communication. Furthermore, F15 kept showing her support for M15 throughout the interaction by giving him hints whenever he paused due to lack of vocabulary. For instance:

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1F15: I think the maths we are learn now, maybe the thing is very difficult But the expect score we should get is very low, and we don’t need to care a lot about it, we just need to be careful. 2M15: No, no, no. ((speak quickly)) Our teacher has said that mathematics, English is the, are the two important skill, tools for us arts student. You will very easy to …to…to…just…= Î3F15: to get higher mark on that three subjects. 4M15: =Yeah. […] 5F15: No, no. It’s not about the level, it’s about our Ėattitude, right? And take something for instance, we have now began the seventh lesson. It’s all about // Î6M15: Yeah, Ėit’s easy, we just need to use the…er…the…= Î7F15: use something that has give you 8M15: =Yeah

Excerpt 8-10 In the above excerpt, when M15 paused in turn 2, saying “You will very easy to …to…to…just…”, F15 helped him by giving him the hints “to get higher mark on that three subjects” in turn 3. Later when M15 interrupted her in turn 6 but could not express his meaning fluently, F15 helped him again in turn 7 by offering the clue, “use something that has give you” which was accepted by M15 in turn 8. In both cases, F15 did not use her advanced English skills to occupy the floor but helped M15 to continue talking. Moreover, when showing disagreement, F15 did it in a very gentle and indirect way which differed a lot from M15’s face-threatening disagreement in excerpt 8-9. For another example,

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1M15: Well, I don’t think it’s necessary for us to celebrate the Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in China, you know. Firstly that I think the mother’s Day and Father’s Day are western festivals. Nowadays we just think that Chinese, we should protect our own festivals. […] And secondly, I don’t think to celebrate one day of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can show our love to our father and mother. I think maybe we can everyday is mother’s Day, every day is father’s Day. […] So I mean that maybe we can show our love just by some detail things. Just do some simple things, just enough and our parents, I think that they know we love them. That’s enough. What’s your opinion? ((M15 spoke for nearly 2 minutes here)) 2F15: You have made a good debate, you know? And// Î3M15: Thank you, hehe ((laugh)) and I don’t want to be a caller, hehe. 4F15: Ok, I think, when you mention at the beginning that we should protect our own culture, you are mention [political issues. Î5M15: [We are Chinese, hehe. ((laughing while talking)) 6F15: Anyway, I think it’s quite necessary, ˆOk. 7M15: You are always OPPOSITE me= Î8F15: =No, no, no, no. Sometimes, I’m with you. You are right sometimes. ((the boy laughed)) I really don’t want to make a debate. I’m just thinking of…I don’t know, say what I’m thinking about. I think Father’s Day and Mother’s Day are both very necessary because even though they are Western countries’ festival, I think they are international festivals, right? 9M15: Yeah. [28:55] 10F15: And I don’t think, er, it is really good for us to welcome some Western festivals in China and you mentioned that we have to protect our traditional festival. I agree it very much. And I don’t think you can just protect our traditional festival just defence, or just make something western, I think they are very good for us. We should welcome, WELCOME them and make them into our own culture. Besides// Î11M15: You also count the…ህᰃ…= Î12F15: political side? 13M15: Yeah, hehe 14F15: Ok. Maybe, maybe, er….

Excerpt 8-11 In this excerpt, M15 behaved very aggressively in interaction. He interrupted F15 three times in turns 3, 5 and 11. In turn 5, having realised that F15 might disagree with his idea of not celebrating Father’s Day and Mother’s Day because of the need to protect Chinese culture, M15 hurriedly interrupted F15 in the form of overlapping. Moreover, on

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hearing F15’s explanation in turn 10, M15 interrupted her impatiently by pointing out that she was also taking account of the political aspect, which he thought was the reason that she disagreed with him in turn 4. Such reactions to F15’s speech exhibited M15’s eagerness to persuade F15 to accept his viewpoints and to prove to her that he was right. In contrast, F15 always presented her opinions in a very gentle way. For instance, on detecting M15’s intention and emotion in turn 5, she replied in turn 6, “Anyway, I think it’s quite necessary, 噗Ok.” in a comforting tone. When M15 scolded her for always taking the opposite view to his, she explained immediately in turn 8 that sometimes she was with him and she did not want to have an argument with him. In turn 10, before developing her argument that they could not protect their traditional festivals by just rejecting Western ones, she firstly said she agreed with M15’s idea that they should protect their traditional festivals. Such a strategy protected M15’s face since she agreed with his idea to some extent. In addition, she also did not forget to offer M15 help when he paused in turn 11, even though he was arguing with her. Moreover, faced with M15’s opposition, she just accepted it in turn 14 without fierce argument. She skipped the topic of protecting traditional festivals and shifted M15’s attention to the possibility of showing love to their parents in subsequent omitted turns. In addition, at the very beginning when M15 was speaking for as long as nearly two minutes, she did not interrupt him at all but listened to him carefully. On the contrary, M15 interrupted F15 impatiently in turn 11 when she was explaining her idea. On the whole, M15 behaved in an aggressive way and occupied the conversational floor most of the time when carrying out the first three tasks. In contrast, F15 behaved in a very gentle way. She kept using her advanced English ability to help M15 to move on instead of taking the floor herself. Such a performance differed greatly from her behaviour in group discussions with other girls when she was excluded by the peers for too talkative and competitive in English (see section 7.4.2). Different aspects of individuals’ identities are likely to influence the ways they talk and the ways people speak to them, as a student or as a girl or boy. They are the dynamic enactment and expression of their identity (Riley 2007:88). In other words, when working with girls in a group discussion, F15 possibly positioned herself more as an L2 learner who could use her ability to compete with others. On the contrary, when working with M15, she aligned herself more with the gender aspect of her social identity, namely, that of a girl working with a boy, who should behave kindly and gently. On the one hand, in the research, F15 several times displayed in

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the interview and group discussion that she distinguished between roles as of a student and a girl (see section 5.1.1). She insisted that at schools they were students and did not need to worry too much about how a girl should behave. Apparently, this was not the truth, as displayed in her communication with M15. In other words, she tried to portray a more liberal gender role in front of the researcher and her peers. On the other hand, F15’s emergent subject positioning of herself as a girl working with a boy was not accepted by M15 who treated her more as an L2 learner than a girl. M15 expressed the view in interview that there were differences between working with girls and boys, “When working with a girl, I would pay attention to the way I am talking with her. At least, I wouldn’t play a joke on her and would try to be decent and gentle. When working with boys, since we are the same, it doesn’t matter, you can play jokes if you want to, and can show your disagreement directly.”14

In other words, M15 otherised girls as a group of people who were very different from boys and hence should be treated in a different way. Later, when asked for his impressions of girls around him, M15 replied as follows,

14

(original Chinese) M15: “ᇍཇ⫳ˈ㚃ᅮ佪‫ܜ‬៥㽕⊼ᛣ៥ⱘ䆆䆱ᮍᓣˈ㟇ᇥ ϡӮ䱣֓ᓔ⥽ュˈ㽕໻ᮍ⏽ᶨϔ⚍DŽ✊ৢ䎳⬋ৠᄺ௯ˈ໻ᆊ䛑ϔḋଞˈ≵݇ ㋏ଞDŽ㛑ᓔ⥽ュህᓔ⥽ュDŽ᳝ҔМϡৠᛇ⊩гৃҹⳈ᥹㸼䖒ߎᴹDŽ”

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Original Chinese

English Translation

1M15: ⦄೼ⱘཇ⫳䛑䎳⬋ⱘԐⱘˈ੉ ੉DŽ៥਼䖍䙷޴Ͼ䛑ᰃ⋐ཛൟķⱘ䙷 ⾡ˈ੉੉ ˄ ˄䖍䇈䖍ュ˅ ˅ DŽཌྷӀгᰃ 䙷⾡ᕜ㛑䇈ⱘ䙷⾡DŽ᳝ᯊ‫׭‬䎳ҪӀ೼ ϔ䍋≵᳝䙷⾡ᛳ㾝ˈህᰃ⬋ཇ⫳ϡৠ ⱘᛳ㾝ĸDŽ 2R: 䙷Դ䎳ᗢМḋⱘཇ⫳೼ϔ䍋ⱘᯊ ‫׭‬Ӯ᳝ϡৠⱘᛳ㾝˛ 3M15: ៥᳒㒣ⱘৢḠˈϡ䆆䆱ⱘ䙷 ⾡ˈᕜ᭛䴭DŽ䎳䖭ḋⱘཇ⫳ড়԰ⱘ䆱 ህӮᑇ䴭⏽ᶨᕜ໮DŽ

1M15: Girls nowadays look like boys, hehe. Those ones around me are all shrewishķ, hehe ((laughing while talking)). They are all very talkative. Sometimes when I am with them I don’t have that kind of feeling, the feeling of the difference between girls and boysĸ. 2R: So working with what kind of girl would make you have different feelings? 3M15: The girl who once sat behind me who is not talkative but gentle and quiet. When talking with that kind of a girl, (I) would be more gentle and soft.

Excerpt 8-12 In this excerpt, M15 divided girls around him into two kinds. Some were very talkative and hence labelled as “shrewish”. Some were “traditional” Chinese girls who were less talkative but gentle and quiet. On the one hand, this explanation of how girls behaved in different ways provided evidence to reject the stereotypical labels of “Chinese girl” and “English girl” (see section 6.1.1). On the other hand, as M15 made clear in the excerpt, it was only working with those “typical” girls that could give him the experience of working with a girl and thus his behaviour would become more gentle and decent in front of them. When working with the “shrewish” ones, he would behave towards them as if he were working with a boy, namely, playing jokes with them and expressing his meaning directly in front of them. This clearly explained the reason for his competitive and tough behaviour in communicating with F15 when carrying out tasks, for example, abrupt interruptions and face-threatening disagreement. Because F15 was one of those “shrewish” and “talkative” girls around him whom he did not regard as a girl, he treated her as a boy with whom he could play joke and argue. The expression in turn 7 of excerpt 8-11, “You are always opposite me” showed his persistent way of communicating with F15. To sum up, we can infer that in the process of performing communicative tasks with F15 in the research, M15 did not have the

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sense that he was doing them with a girl. Instead, he treated them as two EFL learners communicating with each other in English in order to complete the tasks. In other words, he situationally positioned both himself and F15 more as language learners. Other cogent evidence lay in his performance when carrying out the picture-description task with F15 when his behaviour was far more modest than when engaged in the other three tasks. In carrying out the picture-description task, M15 chose to describe the picture and asked F15 to draw. Unlike the other tasks in which students had more freedom to select their own topics to develop the conversation, the picture-description task required the describer to use more vocabulary to describe the picture provided as accurately as possible so that the partner could draw it well. Due to a lack of vocabulary, M15 could not describe the picture very well for F15. He admitted his lack of ability in this respect and apologised to F15 several times in the course of the task, for example, “Sorry, it’s my mistake”; “You know, I am so weak at it”; “My pronunciation is not very good”; and “Sorry, I can’t find the word”. As a result, although F15 played the role of painter, she took the leading role in this task by asking lots of questions to help the conversation to proceed. Moreover, she voluntarily kept reminding M15 of the vocabulary he did not know and encouraged him by saying things such as “It’s ok, you can do it!”; “No, you are describing well, go on!” In following-up interview, M15 stated, “I originally thought providing the description would be a better opportunity to display one’s English. However, actually I should have let her describe the picture because she has more vocabulary than me.” 15 In other words, the original reason for his choice of playing the role of describer was to show his ability in English. He admitted that F15 was better at English, at least from the perspective of range of vocabulary. The fact that he frequently practised English with F15 also evidenced his recognition of F15’s English ability. His modest behaviour in this task was another embodiment of it. To sum up, in the process of carrying out the four communicative tasks, M15 positioned both himself and F15 more as two language learners working together. F15’s negotiation of her self-positioning as a girl working with a boy was not successful with M15. Her advanced English ability did not seem to empower her as a 15

(original Chinese) M15: “៥ᴀᴹ㾝ᕫ䇈᳈㛑ԧ⦄ϔϾҎⱘ㣅䇁∈ᑇDŽ݊ᅲ ᑨ䆹㽕䅽ཌྷᴹ䇈ⱘDŽཌྷ䆡∛䞣↨៥໻ϔѯDŽ”

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good L2 learner while maintaining her persona as a good Chinese girl. The “repertoires” of identities involve both those that each of us possesses for ourselves and that others possess for us, so long as they are confirmed as playing a significant role in our interactions with others and are a part of how we think about ourselves and those around us (Joseph 2004). The contradictory representation of F15 in her own and M15’s eyes as displayed when they were working in this particular pair not only clearly showed the multiple levels of F15’s gendered identity (the social, the personal and the communicative self as a girl), but also displayed the complex process of one’s gender construction and its negotiation. If we treat gender as one type of power, within which, traditionally speaking, boys are superior to girls, we can see that these relations of power serve to enable or constrain the range of identities that language learners can negotiate in their classrooms and communities (Norton 1997). When there is an imbalance of power in a relationship, it is possible for anybody in any interaction to shift positioning within an agreed framework and to change position. In other words, it clearly shows the fluidity of the social roles and the complexity of allowing aspects of self to be acknowledged socially, particularly where unacknowledged issues of dominance and power are involved. From an educational point of view, the window of EFL had an educational impact which caused students to reflect wider social roles.

8.3.3 Case F10-M11 In the above two cases, no matter whether the girls successfully used their English ability to reshape their partners’ impressions of them as both good Chinese girls and able English learners, it was the boys who “decided” the girls positioning. In other words, girls let themselves be positioned socially by the boys. The possibility for girls to project themselves as good learners without losing their identity as ideal female partners was determined by the way the boys performed in tasks. However, communication between F10 and M11 in a pair was an exception, since the boy’s position was finally “decided” by his female partner. This was in fact the only exception among the whole 6 female-male pairs whose interactions were transcribed in the research. In this pair, M11 was a boy who showed great enthusiasm for learning English. He loved English songs and films and he enjoyed imitating the way native speakers speak according to his “template” (see

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section 7.3). Both his teachers and classmates described him as a talkative boy. However, his enthusiasm for learning English was once treated by other students as being too feminine (see section 5.4). F10 was a girl who was neither introverted nor extrovert, but kept a certain distance with boys in daily school life. She also displayed a great interest in learning English (see section 7.4.2). She did better in English generally than M10. She ranked the nineteenth in the end-of-term English examination of the grade, while M10 ranked the thirtieth. Her vocabulary was also wider than that of M10. In carrying out the four communicative tasks, F10 played the leading role in conversation from the perspective of topic initiations and shifts, the use of imperative sentences, decision-making in tasks and the assigning of the roles of picture-describer and painter. For example, in the task requiring students to organise a Christmas party, she was the one who asked almost all the questions and finally decided the time, the place and the activities to be organised in the party. Î1F10: Maybe we can sing Christmas songs and dance together and play some games. 2M11: ĘOh::, will you sing the Ėsong? 3F10: ME::? No, I’m just going to practice. 4M11: Why not? You can…er… 5F10: Ok, maybe I can tell you the name of the song ‘When Christmas come to town’. 6M11: I think there is another good song. Î7F10: So would you please sing it loudly? ((laughing in a teasing way)) 8M11: ĘNo::, I only know the name, it’s very difficult. 9F10: I don’t know, hehe ((laugh)) 10M11: Oh, what a pity. [10:36] Î11F10: I can, I can have some time to hear it, to listen to it. [10:45] Do you think it’s necessary to prepare any gift for the attenders ((wrong pronunciation of ‘attendees’))? 12M11: Attenders ((correction of F10’s pronunciation)) 13F10: Attenders, yes. 14M11: Yes. It’s very necessary. BECAUSE if you DON’T give them some gifts, they may not take part in. ((laughing while talking)) Î15F10: Hehe, so what gift will you prepare? Like some candy or some…just some lovely and little thing? 16M11: Yes, and we can also give some Ėmoney too. ((laughing while talking, laughing together)) 17F10: Hehe, if you have enough money you can do it, hehe 18M11: Yeah.

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Î19F10: You know, we have some Christmas games, so there will be someone who is really well-performed. Will you give them some reward? 20M11: ĘYes, we should give them. Because they can have a good time so, and then they can get a reward, they will be more 噗happy::. [12:13] Î21F10: Yes, maybe we can give some one, like you, if you sing a really good song, I will give you a reward that ‘o, Mike is the best singer in our class’. Right? ((said in a joking way)) 22M11: No. ((laughing while talking)) = Î23F10: =I think it is a really honour to you. 24M11: Maybe, maybe, just maybe. 25F10: Maybe, hehe. But I think it’s a good idea, so you can prepare your song and then SHOW you, show yourself on that day. 26M11: Yes. Î27F10: So now we will conclude our discussion. We want to hold the party at, at Christmas Eve in the dancing room and we will invited the whole class, include our headteacher and our physical teachers. 嘙Դ䇈 activities 嘙 (嘙you talk about activities now嘙 ((whispered in Chinese)) 28M11: Ar? ((surprising tone)) And we will also sing a song and have some games sot that they can have fun. And we will prepare some gifts for the attenders like candies. And it is also necessary to give some reward for those very well performed student. Î29F10: That’ all.

Excerpt 8-13 In this excerpt, F10’s leading role was displayed in the following ways: firstly, it was mainly F10 who asked the questions which led the direction of the conversation in turns 11 (the necessity of preparing gifts for attendees), 15 (possible gifts to be prepared) and 19 (rewards for game winners). Secondly, in turn 27, F10 made a unilateral decision to finish the task by drawing their previous discussion about the party to a conclusion. She firstly summarised their decision about the site and the party guests. Then she asked M11 to summarise their decision about activities in the party by whispering in Chinese. This whispering in Chinese asking M11 to talk in an imperative tone happened frequently throughout their communication. For example, she sometimes told M11 to ask her questions by whispering 嘙⦄೼Դᴹ䯂嘙(ºnow you ask the questionº). Such a commanding tone revealed her power over M11 in relation to communication. Thirdly, in this excerpt, F10 teased M11 twice in turns 7 and 21 about his potential singing performance in the

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party. Moreover, when M11 over-accommodated to the way he thought native speakers spoke, F10 clearly showed her dislike (see section 7.3). The overwhelmingly leading role F10 played in communication with M11 was different from that which F1 played when conversing with M1. Although F1 also led the direction of the communication and interrupted M1 frequently, she did it in a less competitive way. She tried to involve M1 in communication in a gentle way by giving him hints about how to go on. In contrast, F10 did it more in a commanding way by ordering M11 to talk. This contradicted her statement in the focus group discussion that she could not behave in the way that the character, Monica, in “Friends” does because Monica was a strong “big woman” (see section 5.1.1). Moreover, she also stated in interview that if she herself could choose, she would choose to work with girls because when she was working with a boy, she would behave in a restrained way. Her performance with M11 in tasks was apparently the opposite. She even teased M11 sometimes in the task. In other words, her experience of working with M11 did not conform to what she had described would be the experience of working with a boy. In the task follow-up interview, she commented that the whole process of carrying out tasks with M11 had gone very smoothly. Original Chinese

English Translation

1R: ᛳ㾝䎳 M11 ড়԰ⱘᗢМḋ˛ 2F10:៥ᛳ㾝᳝ϔѯϰ㽓䇈ߎᴹⱘ䆱 Ҫৃ㛑᳈਀៥ⱘ䆱ϔ⚍ķDŽ 3R: ᛣ㾕ϡϔ㟈ⱘᯊ‫׭‬෎ᴀϞᰃҪཹ ण৫˛ 4F10: ෎ᴀϞᰃ৻ˈ಴Ўᛳ㾝៥䇈ᕫ ↨䕗᳝⧚ˈ੉੉DŽ 5R: 䙷㽕ᰃ㾝ᕫҪ䇈ᕫ≵᳝䘧⧚ԴӮ ᗢМḋ˛ 6F10: ড假ҪDŽϔ㠀ᴹ䇈ˈ៥䇈ϔϟ ⱘ䆱ҪህӮ䇈þ噗઺ˈᰃⱘᰃⱘÿĸDŽ ˄ ˄ュ˅ ˅ৃ㛑ҪᗻḐህ䖭ḋˈ䎳Ҫϔ 䍋ড়԰ህ䎳䎳ཇ⫳ᨁḷϔḋˈᕜ䱣ᛣˈ ህ‫ڣ‬ᰃ᮹ᐌ㘞໽ĹDŽ

1R: What’s your feeling of working with M11? 2F10: I feel that he would follow what I said.ķ 3R: When there were disagreements, it was always he that compromised? 4F10: Yes. Because I think I am more persuasive, hehe. 5R: When you think he is less persuasive, what do you do? 6F10: Overrule him. Generally speaking, if I say something, he would say ‘ˆO’, yes, yes’ĸ((laughing)). Maybe his personality is like this (he would not argue with you). I feel like I am working with a girl, feel very free, like everyday conversationĹ.

Excerpt 8-14

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F10’s description of M11’s attitude towards disagreement conformed with M11’s performance in the tasks. He seldom disagreed with F10’s viewpoints. Whenever she said something, he would promptly show agreement. She even said in turn 6 that working with M11 was just like working with a girl, which made her feel free to talk. In other words, it seems that she did not treat M11 as a boy but more as if he were a girl. This echoed with the view that some girls in class held, namely, that M11 was one of those boys who showed great interest in English but were somewhat effeminate. Her expression in turn 4 of the excerpt “Because I think I am more persuasive” revealed her confidence in front of M11 when performing the tasks with him. In short, when working with M11, F10 oriented herself more to the learner aspect of her social identity and used her superior ability in English as a powerful advantage which allowed her to direct the conversation and behave in a competitive way. In contrast, M11 regarded himself more as a boy working with a girl. In the task follow-up interview, he explained his consistent agreement with F10 as follows: “If I was working with a boy, if there were disagreements, I would definitely argue with him. She is a girl, of course I have to give in to her a little bit.”16 This was verified in the focus group discussion. When he discussed issues concerning “Friends” in an all-male group, he dared to argue with others about his viewpoint. The laughing exhibited in turns 14, 16 and 22 of excerpt 8-13 also showed that on the whole, the atmosphere of their communication was relaxed and free. In other words, when doing tasks with F10, he positioned himself more as a boy than an L2 learner, although such a positioning was not acknowledged by F10. Although F10 led the conversation throughout the tasks and sometimes directly showed her dissatisfaction with M11’s performance in English, he did not seem to get angry as indicated by the whole atmosphere of the process. Moreover, he commented in the follow-up interview that the experience of working with F10 was very happy. To sum up, the experience of working with M11 empowered F10 in terms of being both a good L2 learner and a popular Chinese girl. In contrast, M11’s enthusiasm for learning English and his “over-exaggerated” behaviour in English disempowered him so that he was neither a good L2 learner nor a popular Chinese boy even though he had made great efforts to present the image of a boy who is 16

(original Chinese) M10: “བᵰᰃ䎳⬋⫳ড়԰ⱘ䆱ˈ᳝ᛣ㾕៥㚃ᅮӮᔧҕϡ 䅽DŽԚཌྷᰃཇ⫳ˈ㚃ᅮ㽕䅽ⴔཌྷϔ⚍DŽ”

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easy-going and tolerant in front of a girl.

8.4 Summary In the school and classroom context of being a student, there were good English language learners and good girls and boys whose behaviour conformed to that of the labelled ideal Chinese girls and boys. It was always mixed but students’ performance in interaction allowed us to see precisely how the negotiation evolved. The appropriation of different aspects of social identities by individual pupils as students learning English or girl or boy learning English was shown to vary in context, according to who the interlocutors were and the aim of the interactions. It not only affected students’ actual behaviour in carrying out tasks, but also their reflections and comments on their own and partners’ behaviour in interviews. The analysis of the interactional behaviour of the above three pairs showed the complexity and subtleties of students’ negotiation of the multiple aspects of their identities in interaction. In no respect does it mean that the students mentioned in these three cases go through the same process of negotiation in any given context, as shown above. In contrast, with a change of context, they have to renegotiate their identities accordingly to adjust to the new discourse. For example, if F1 were to work with another boy, no matter who the boy was, her negotiation of multiple identities may be very different from the process she underwent when working with M1. This was the same for the other students. This indeed embodies the dynamic, constructed and negotiable characteristics of “gender” as a construct. It makes clear the way in which the exact context, for example, the situation of the interlocutor with whom they are talking, influences individuals’ negotiation of positioning in discourse. Some girls resisted the kind of projected identities which were given to them and negotiated their emergent subject positioning successfully in interaction, some failed. The way they were effectively perceived by the other was not always consistent with the one they tried to project. On the whole, it seems that it was generally the boys who decided girls’ position in interaction. The only exceptional case was the one in which the boy was considered too “effeminate” to be a boy and the girl used her English ability to dominate the interaction. Some girls successfully used their English ability as an important means of setting up an image of a capable girl in front of the boy, without being rejected.

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However, not all students succeeded in doing so. On the contrary, most students in the research lacked an understanding of the fact that using English can be an invaluable instrument for improving their gender awareness and performance. They just treated learning English as learning other subjects, the main aim being pass the examinations, and spent most of their time doing grammar exercises (such as the pair M2-F2 in section 9.2). It triggered our consideration of the social and pedagogical thinking about the learning of English in the curriculum in relation to gender construction and its negotiation. Chapter 9 will discuss the educational and pedagogical implications of the research in relation to gender and second language learning.

CHAPTER NINE EDUCATIONAL AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH

The educational research so far concerning learning/teaching EFL in China has been devoted to concerns with efficient learning of a foreign language, producing highly linguistically competent and proficient speakers (see section 3.2). This study however identifies an important educational dimension of having EFL in the school curriculum, which allows the development of social attitudes towards gender and SLL. In other words, the value of learning English in the school curriculum, which is at the moment perceived mainly as functional in China, can be more socially and educationally valuable because of the perspective on the identity construction it provides. The gender issue, a fundamental issue to any society, seems to be limited in the context of contemporary China. The sociocultural background of the Chinese community suggests that there is a gender-blindness generally among the people (see section 3.1). In the research, the analysis of the macro-level school policy (e.g. seating arrangement) and micro-level linguistic (e.g. ambiguous terms students used to talk about gender issues) and non-linguistic clues (e.g. the use of laughter and eye contact by students when talking about gender issues) of students’ interactions in discourse revealed that gender-related issues were treated by students as too sensitive to be discussed in public (see Chapters 6 and 7). Findings reported in previous chapters have shown that in the school context the EFL classroom which integrates CLT is one of the prominent places where students can learn, think about and try out different ways of behaving as girls and boys. In the book, I identify the discursive place provided by learning English in the school curriculum in relation to students’ gender awareness and performance using the metaphor “space”. Four interconnected spaces (i.e. “mental/psychological space”, “social space”, “physical space” and “linguistic space”) were

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identified through students’ claims and interactional behaviour in discourse. They will be discussed in section 9.1 of the chapter. It was through students’ use of English as a foreign language in discourse that these spaces were created. The remaining sections deal with other educational and pedagogical implications of the research, including implications for the assessment of language learners (in section 9.2), teacher training (in section 9.3) and teaching practice (in section 9.4).

9.1 The four interrelated “spaces” 9.1.1

Mental/psychological “space”

The mental/psychological space in the book refers to the space which allows students to think about, and reflect on, gender roles and behaviour. Students involved in the research showed in discourse that they were confronted with the variation in gendered social norms as the outcome of socialisation, on the one hand, and the outcome of SLL in school, particularly using the CLT approach, on the other hand. In one respect, they frequently referred to the culturally idealised gender norms with which they were familiar in interviews and focus group discussions (see Chapter 5). In another, together with media representations, the learning of English in school gave them a sense of the possible trajectories of gender behaviour available in different societies (see section 6.2). When students were confronted with unfamiliar ways of behaving as girls and boys in English-speaking countries, they started to make comparisons with, and reflect upon, the way they themselves and their peers behaved in the Chinese community (see section 6.1). In other words, learning English made them think about their own way of being socialised as girls/boys. It enabled them to realise the multiplicity and complexity of ways of enacting gender. Most students in the research exhibited essentialist views of gender roles and behaviour (see section 6.1.1). The context of learning English in the school community provided them with a mental space where these essentialist views could be questioned. It was only after students became aware of their gender enactment possibly being different, but not essentially different from that of the target language community, that they made decisions about whether and how to use the various spaces provided by learning English at school to reposition and manifest themselves as girls and boys in interactions.

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9.1.2. Social “space” The social “space” is interrelated with the mental “space”. The research has shown that it is possible to lead adolescents to start to think of learning English as a means of becoming aware of and expressing their social roles in society in a distinct way. As illuminated in Chapter 8, students negotiated their social roles as being good Chinese girls/boys and being good students in interactions via the use of English. They oriented themselves towards different aspects of social identity in context in relation to the communication goals. When the prominent goal was to improve English performance, they put their gendered roles in second place. In contrast, when the main aim was to be acknowledged as an ideal Chinese girl/boy, they situationally highlighted their gendered social role and put the student role in second place. Their performance of these social roles in interactions with the help of the reflections with which the researcher provided them in the research (e.g. asking questions which directed their attention to gender roles and behaviours) helped them to discover the fact that they can position themselves differently in different situations and their construction of gender is indeed negotiable. From this point of view, the learning of English and the use of English as a foreign language in interactions helped students to reflect on social roles and social rights, and become more aware of them.

9.1.3 Physical “space” The physical “space” was identified in the book as the “stage” where students acted their social roles, including gender roles, in English in discourse. Students in the research exhibited changes in behaviour as they attempted to perform gender differently with the aim of converging with the way they imagined English girls and boys behave (see section 7.3). Even though such behavioural changes may only be temporary, it at least demonstrated that their habitual ways of behaving as girls and boys can be modified through learning English as a foreign language. The specific nature of the EFL class compared to other subject classes, including the assigning of communicative tasks and the relatively free atmosphere in class, provided them with an invaluable site to try out those unfamiliar ways of enacting gender in English (see section 7.2.2). Such a physical space was claimed by students to be convenient and safe. On the one hand, it was convenient because there were far more

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communicative tasks in the EFL class than the other subject classes through which students were provided with opportunities to work with opposite-sex students and could play all kinds of roles (see section 7.2.2). On the other hand, it was a safe space because with the “mask” of being a good English language learner students did not need to worry much about either being gossiped about when working with opposite-sex students or being excluded by their peers for not behaving in an ideal Chinese way (see Chapter 7). For instance, girls could act more capably and competitively in front of boys without being scolded by their peers (see the analysis of case F1-M1 in section 8.3.1 for example). When adolescents were in the EFL class, it was more appealing to them to appropriate for themselves the image of good students learning English well so that they could behave as they thought English girls/boys would. In other words, it was easier for them to reassure their peers that it was all right for them to behave differently as girls/boys from how they normally would because they were presenting themselves as L2 learners who were playing roles and trying to behave like native speakers of English for social gains (e.g. good grades in English). From this perspective, such a physical space enhanced the social and mental spaces discussed previously.

9.1.4 Linguistic “space” The linguistic “space” in the book was identified in terms of the following two aspects. Firstly, many students stated in the research that the use of English as a foreign language in interactions and the pragmatic transfer between Chinese and English gave them the courage to express their meanings in a more enthusiastic and free way which they seldom do in Chinese. It helped them to present a more enthusiastic and passionate persona as a Chinese girl or boy (see section 7.2.1). Although my research did not aim to prove the influence of learning English on learners’ change in personality or long-term behaviour but rather aimed to examine how students construct and negotiate gender in the course of learning EFL, it provided the possibility for future longitudinal research into it. Secondly, the English discourse in operation opens up a space for students to talk about gender, which they may not feel free to talk about on other occasions because of the constraints placed upon them by mainstream society (see section 3.1). For example, in linguistic terms it

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provides the students with words with which to refer to the new notion of “gender”. In Chinese language, there is no specific word for “gender” but only for “sex”. It does not mean we do not have the concept because we have the term “social sex” to refer to it although the term was rarely known among ordinary people (see section 3.1); however, it at least implies there might be barriers to articulate it in Chinese and the concept of “gender” was less accessible to students because the identification of it was not originally done in Chinese. The English word “gender” provided students with a more convenient way to talk about it. The research conducted by Snow (1975) showed that if one’s first language does not make clear the difference between any two notions, people tend to confuse the two words and make mistakes all the time. Even if they understand the difference, the appropriate use of the word is delayed. In the research, it seemed that it was easier for students to learn to distinguish the two (i.e. “gender” and “sex”) as words in English and students could understand the distinctions intellectually, which did not affect their own identity in any way. In the research, both students’ verbal and non-verbal clues in interactions revealed that they tended to treat gender issues as sex issues, which were unmentionable (see page 217). After taking part in the research, they started to realise that gender issues were not equivalent to sex issues and that talking about gender roles and behaviour did not necessarily mean talking about sex or sexuality. As a result, in the later stage of the fieldwork, they had not only consciously picked up the concept of “gender” and used the term in their discourse, but also took a more open attitude towards issues of gender roles and behaviour. In short, it seems students participating in the research were able to use English as a tool to discuss issues on gender much more easily than they could in Chinese. From this point of view, the linguistic space was also interconnected with the social and mental spaces.

9.2 Educational implications for the assessment of language learners Although the NNCET has specified that the aim of EFL teaching in school is to improve students’ language skills and foster their ability to communicate in English (see section 3.2), the examination system in China still focuses on testing students’ mastery of linguistic forms of the target language. This inconsistency between the two constrained both teachers’ and students’ awareness of how they could use learning English

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as a tool for self-development (see section 7.4.1). For instance, teachers claimed in the research that they wanted to develop students’ communicative competence and enable them to speak in contextually appropriate ways but the examination system was a barrier to this goal (see section 6.2.2). Students’ chances of acquiring more knowledge in the EFL class about the way native speakers behave were hence decreased. As shown in the research, the main source of students’ gender representations of English girls and boys was reported as resulting from media input rather than knowledge learnt from their EFL teachers and textbooks (see section 6.2). Many students in the study revealed that they expected their teachers to teach more knowledge about English culture (see section 6.2.2). Moreover, students themselves also pointed out that the examination system reduced their enthusiasm to learn English and thus their aim in learning English became mainly examination-oriented (see section 7.4.1). From this perspective, it seems that only if the examination system in China were to change to better accommodate the goal of CLT would the educational function of teaching and learning EFL in relation to students’ gender awareness be improved. Given the type of examination system in China, the mastery of linguistic forms of the target language (TL) was the main criterion used to assess a good L2 learner. However, findings reported in previous chapters questioned this criterion (see section 7.4). Understanding of what constitutes good language learning requires attention to social practices in the contexts in which individuals learn an L2. The success of good language learners should not “only be examined on the basis of their control or speed of acquisition of a variety of linguistic forms or meanings”, but rather “on the basis of their access to a variety of conversations in their communities” (Norton and Toohey 2001:310). This research suggests that a good L2 learner in a local school community should not only exhibit a mastery of particular linguistic forms, but also the ability to use the target language to communicate effectively and to achieve self-development including the aspects that their identity construction and negotiation follow. In the study, some students were good at written English according to their scores in examinations, but when it came to communication, they displayed insufficient ability to express their meaning in English. Moreover, they tended to treat communicative tasks as exercises that mainly tested their grammatical knowledge. Their aim in learning English was more examination-oriented. As a result, they exhibited a lack of awareness of how to use the opportunities provided by tasks to

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reposition themselves as girls or boys. Take the pair F2-M2 as an example. Both F2 and M2 performed very well in English examinations because they spent a lot time in practising grammar and the use of vocabulary. F2 was ranked second in the end-of-term English examination of the grade and M2 was ranked eighth. In terms of their knowledge of particular language forms, both of them were unequivocally good language learners. However, once it came to communicating with each other in carrying out tasks, their performance was not as satisfactory as their written English. When they performed the four communicative tasks together, they paid great attention to their grammar. There were many corrections in interaction, including self-repair and repair of the partner’s grammar and pronunciation mistakes. In other words, most time, they were not cooperating to complete the task as smoothly as possible (i.e. to exhibit communication skill) but rather were focusing on the accuracy of each other’s utterance (i.e. to exhibit pure linguistic skill). Therefore, the discursive space they could use for negotiating their gender identity was rather limited compared to the three pairs discussed in section 8.3. There were also students in the research who were good at both oral and written English but were excluded by their peers because their behaviour was treated as inappropriate in relation to being a Chinese girl/boy. Their inability to gain access to the social networks of the community seemed to constrain their performance in English. For example, F15 was forced to stop talking in the EFL class because being a Chinese girl, her “talkative behaviour” was regarded as too “showy” by her peers (see section 7.4.2). Her efforts to present the image of a popular Chinese girl in interactions with M15 was also analysed as being unsuccessful because M15 did not treat her as a girl at all because of his everyday impression of her (see section 8.3.2). Compared to F15, F1 was not only good at written and spoken English but had also successfully constructed the self-image of a person who was good at learning English without losing her ideal Chinese girl persona (see sections 7.4.2 and 8.3.1). Students belonged to interlocking communities of practice at any given time in any given place (Wenger 1998). It was important for them to manage these multiple memberships properly and to display the ability to negotiate their self-positioning in context to obtain social gains (e.g. gaining access to peer networks and being acknowledged as a good L2 learner). What F1 managed to do was to walk a fine line between her sense of belonging to the mainstream social community and also to the

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imagined target language community (see section 7.4.2). From this point of view, F1 seems to be better qualified as a good L2 learner than F15. The research in a sense provides adolescents with an opportunity to realise the complexity of social lives and social interaction by displaying the results of the research findings to them. To sum up, the adjustment of standards used to assess a good L2 learner can help both teachers and students to develop a more comprehensive view of EFL learning as a means of educational progress and self-development.

9.3 Educational implications for teacher training The research has shown that the fact that the Chinese sociocultural background prevents adolescents taking a constructivist view of gender roles and behaviour, can be mediated through the teaching of English via CLT1 (see Chapters 5, 6 and 7). Although, due to various constraints (see section 7.4), students were limited in using those potential “spaces” provided by the learning of English in the school curriculum, it showed things were moving and improving. If the pedagogy support it by making use of appropriate tasks not only students’, but also teachers’ gender awareness may be improved. From this point of view, the research leads on to the discussion of training teachers to become aware of gender issues in relation to EFL learning and to the use of particular forms of certain tasks or activities to improve students’ gender awareness in interaction. In the research, there was evidence that the learning of EFL helped students to think about the way they themselves behaved in comparison with the way girls and boys in English countries behave (see Chapters 6 and 7). However, it did not make them question gender representations imposed on them by the different kinds of media. Students created stereotypical viewpoints based on images they received via various channels without critically reviewing them (see section 6.2). It seems that they had in mind a “taken-for-granted” norm and assumed that this was the same throughout the English-speaking word. Most students in the research demonstrated a narrow and over-simplified view of culture and of the world. In their discourse, they displayed a tendency to think of the Chinese as the “we” and the rest of 1 It is mediated not only through the EFL class but through particular ways of teaching English as a foreign language because teachers can teach EFL without ever raising any gender issues.

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the world as “the other” and “the West” (see Chapter 6). They frequently referred to such terms as “Western countries” and “foreign countries” to talk about those English countries. In addition, their discourse about “foreigners” equalled “Westerners” and they tended to make general statements about them as a community of people who all speak English and behave in a similar way, which is different from the way Chinese people behave. Moreover, the USA and UK came into their minds first of all when they said “Western countries” or “foreign countries”. It showed that in their opinion, the UK and USA represented the nativeEnglish-speaking countries (see Chapters 6 and 7). Only one student in the research M15 mentioned that people in different countries may behave differently, even among Western countries. 2 Such an over-simplified view may cause problems for students once they are involved in intercultural communication with native-English-speakers from various different countries. As discussed by Scollon and Scollon (2001:174), “stereotyping, no matter whether it is positive or negative in intent, stands in the way of successful communication.” As a result, foreign language learning should open up different views of the world to make people think about different cultures. It should lead students to views of gender variation and a rich view of culture, instead of an essentialist view, which makes students aware that there are differences but at the same time that they are not necessarily essential differences at the level of ontology. “Otherisation” took place frequently in students’ discourse in the research. In addition to otherising English girls and boys as a distinct group, there were also signs that students treated opposite-sex students as belonging to another group that has a different culture from their own (see Chapter 5). Moreover, students in the arts and science classes also treated each other as “the other” not only from the perspective of subject learning, but also from the way they behaved in daily life (see section 5.4). These sorts of otherisation not only influenced their EFL learning (see section 5.4 for example) but also affected their construction and negotiation of themselves as girls and boys in discourse (see Chapters 6, 7 and 8). Data collected from the interviews showed that it is the educational system plus their age, their teacher and parental influence 2

(original Chinese) M15: “ᑊϡᰃ᠔᳝㽓ᮍ೑ᆊⱘҎ䛑ᰃϔḋⱘDŽ㣅೑Ҏ੠ 㕢೑Ҏˈ⊩೑ҎҪӀᑇᯊⱘ㸠ЎдᛃгӮϡϔḋDŽ”; M15: “Not all Westerners behave in a same way. There are differences between the ways British, American and French behave on a daily basis.”

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that oriented them towards a view of culture that separated them (see section 5.4, Chapters 6 and 7). As educators, we should try to find out reasons for, and consequences of, practice, such as labelling, otherisation and stereotyping3and thus break down the walls of segregation created by them (Hudak 2001). However, before teachers can take any action, they should first become aware of those potential issues in EFL teaching and learning concerning gender, such as the influence on students’ EFL learning of idealised gender norms. Data collected from interviews with teachers and observations of their discourse in classrooms showed that they themselves exhibited an essentialist view of gender and culture. For example, the advice they gave concerning students’ choice of class revealed the different future careers they pictured for girls and boys (see section 5.4). The images of English girls and boys they presented to students in class showed that they did indeed hold stereotypical views as well. Many teachers indicated in interview that their knowledge of foreign cultures was also limited and media representation was the source of their first-hand knowledge of English culture. All the phenomena described before about students’ narrow and over-simplified view of culture were also found in teachers’ discourse. However, their discourse in interviews showed that they were never aware of these issues or questioned their gender representations until the researcher asked them the questions in the study. In the interview, when the researcher asked questions about gender-related issues, such as the cultivation of students’ inter-cultural communicative ability as gendered social beings, teachers frequently made comments like: “Ĺ Yi ((surprising tone)), IT IS LIKE THIS!” (in Chinese “Ĺ੺, ⳳ ᰃ 䖭 ḋ ਸ਼!”), which revealed that they had never thought of these questions before. Since teachers played the role of gatekeeper in students’ gender construction in school (see sections 5.4 and 7.2.2), their gender awareness and performance may influence that of students. Although my work is not specifically concerned with the training of teachers in relation to gender awareness or the influence of teachers’ gender awareness and performance towards that of students, it does open a window onto the importance of making teachers sensitive to their own awareness of gender issues in relation to EFL learning and what they can do about it. In other words, it opens up the issue of how to make teachers 3

See Chapters 6 and 7 for the clarification of the concepts of labelling, otherisation and stereotyping and the relationship between them.

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more aware of those potential issues in EFL teaching and learning concerning gender and how important they are for social development in society. The influential role of the teacher is determined not only by the explicit content of the lessons, but by the type of materials used in a lesson and the methods used by the teacher (Morgan 1996). If teachers start to become aware of it, they can take actions to improve the situation, for example, by paying attention to the selection of teaching materials from the perspective of helping students to construct a more dynamic view of gender and cultures. Students in the research also mentioned in interview that those teachers who had experience of studying abroad were more enthusiastic about organising extra-curricular activities than other teachers. They paid more attention to cultivate students’ communicative ability and encouraged them to spend more time in improving their all-round ability rather than just doing exercises. Furthermore, they also held a more open attitude towards the issue of encouraging girls and boys to work together. In addition, inside the EFL class, they not only assigned students more communicative tasks but also provided more information about English countries, drawing partly on their own experiences. Their teaching philosophy was moderated by their experience of studying abroad. Students very much appreciated this type of teacher. One teacher who had such an experience stated in interview, “Improving students’ communicative competence does not conflict with improving their performance in examinations. Once students’ interest in learning English has been developed, their awareness of their improvement in all-round English ability will be raised, including their mastery of grammar. In contrast, if you only teach the grammar and emphasise the importance of getting higher mark in exams by doing exercises day after day, not only is the true aim of learning English lost, but also students will get bored easily. Once they have lost interest in English, how can they improve their performance in examinations?”4 It showed that the effort school put into sending teachers to study abroad (see section 4.1.1) was valuable in terms of improving teachers’ teaching practice and language awareness as well as their awareness of the importance of giving 4

(original Chinese) “ᦤ催ᄺ⫳ⱘ㣅䇁Ѹ䰙㛑࡯䎳ᦤ催ҪӀⱘ㣅䇁៤㒽ᑊϡ ‫ކ‬さDŽᄺ⫳㣅䇁݈䍷ᦤϞњˈҪӀ㞾ᏅህӮᕜЏࡼഄএᡞ㣅䇁ᄺདˈࣙᣀᥠ ᦵ䇁⊩DŽⳌডഄˈϔੇഄ䆆䇁⊩੠ᔎ䇗㗗䆩ҹঞᄺд䇁⊩ⱘ䞡㽕ᗻˈϡԚ϶ ༅њᄺд㣅䇁ⱘⳳℷⳂⱘˈᄺ⫳гӮᕜᆍᯧॠ‫׺‬ᄺдDŽϔᮺҪӀ≵᳝њᄺд ݈䍷ˈ䖬ᗢМᦤ催㗗䆩៤㒽˛”

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sufficient opportunities to their students for communication, including cross-gender communication.

9.4 Pedagogical implications for pair-grouping Different forms of pair-grouping have different communication effects in terms of completing tasks (Macaro 1997). In the research, students widely reported differences with respect to working with sameand opposite-sex students. They mentioned that they would adopt different communicative strategies with a change of interlocutor (see section 8.1). For example, some boys mentioned they would behave more gently while working with girls and would avoid arguments with them. Some, such as M9, stated that in order to perform better in front of girls, they would try to avoid grammatical mistakes, and those expressions that they were not sure about or those topics they were not good at would also be omitted.5 On the whole, it seems that when students were paired with the same sex, the social role of being a girl or boy was not problematic. As a result, they focused on the task and treated the task purely as a task. In contrast, when they were working in mixed-pairs, their social role as a girl or boy became an issue with which they had to deal. In other words, the social situation of mixed-sex pairs was much richer and the performance of gendered roles became part of the task. It (i.e. the organisation of girls and boys working together in a task) encouraged both girls and boys to experience a situation in which the socially gendered self, personally gendered self and communicatively gendered self meet (see the analysis of case F15-M15 in section 8.3.2 for example). This was noticeable when students were performing tasks in the research. For instance, on the whole, it was easier for female-male pairs to achieve agreement without further argument in decision-making tasks because girls and boys in these pairs were trying to avoid debate in order to make a good impression on the other. Moreover, it seems that same-sex pairs developed conversations which were more like an exercise in order to practise English. Their turn-taking in tasks was very neat. In contrast, 5

(original Chinese) M9: “೼ཇ⫳䴶ࠡ㽕㸼⦄ഄདϔ⚍ˈ䇁⊩䫭䇃ଞП㉏ⱘሑ 䞣ᇥ⢃DŽ᳝ѯ㞾ᏅϡӮ㸼䖒ഄгሑ䞣䙓‫៪ˈܡ‬㗙䇈ᤶ߿ⱘϰ㽓䆆䖭ḋDŽ”; M9: “In front of the girls, (we) should behave better, try to avoid grammatical mistakes. Those expressions that we do not know should be avoided or changed to one that we know.”

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turn-taking in mixed-sex pairs was generally less symmetrical and students used more strategies to make the conversation proceed smoothly in order to make a good impression on the partner. Some of these phenomena were also found in my MPhil project and were revealed to have deep sociocultural roots (see Appendix J). Due to the constraints of school policy, the wider sociocultural environment of the Chinese community, the girls and boys involved in the research were seldom paired as deskmates in class. Their opportunities to work with opposite-sex students were hence limited (see section 7.4 and 8.1). Therefore, if EFL teachers were to provide more opportunities for girls and boys working together, their social skills, such as the ability to hold a conversation with opposite-sex students might improve. Students in the research reported their inability to communicate with opposite-sex students. They mentioned that working with such students made them feel constrained. For example, F5 recounted her experience of dancing with a boy in the School English drama competition which made her feel awkward (see section 8.1.1). As an educational researcher, I am dealing with gender roles in terms of education and am concerned with the development of students’ educational skills, communication skills and social skills which is the role that education plays in socialising students. From this perspective, my research strategy also opened up a window onto the more systematic use of SLL as a means of helping students to become more flexible socially and improving their repertoire when communicating with different social and personal background interactants, including communicating with opposite-sex students. Many students stated in interviews that the focus group discussions of “Friends” provided them with an opportunity to become aware of differences between the perspectives of their peers on certain issues, which later made them reflect on their own views. F6 commented in interview, “I think group discussion is really interesting because we all have our own opinions which sometimes differ from one person to another. Through discussion, I can learn about others’ viewpoints, some of which had never crossed my mind before, such as views boys held about our girls and themselves.”6


From this point of view, if an EFL teacher can consciously organise similar group discussion, it would 6 (original Chinese) F6: “៥㾝ᕫ䙷Ͼᇣ㒘䅼䆎㳂ད⥽ⱘˈ಴Ў໻ᆊ䛑᳝৘㞾 ⱘᛇ⊩ˈ㗠Ϩᛇ⊩᳝ᯊ‫׭‬䖬ϡ໾ϔḋˈ䛑ᰃ៥ᛇϡࠄⱘˈ៪㗙ϡӮҢ䙷ѯ㾦 ᑺএᛇⱘDŽ↨བ⬋⫳Ӏᇍ៥Ӏཇ⫳੠ҪӀ㞾Ꮕⱘⳟ⊩DŽ”

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provide more opportunities for students to get to know about the other sex better and help them to become aware of and break down those habitual notions regarding what it means to be a female and male, which not only inhibit their English learning but also constrain their social and communicative skills.

CHAPTER TEN CONCLUSION

Taking the school community and the Chinese EFL classroom as places of social and cultural reproduction, this study examined the social and educational value of second language learning and teaching in the school curriculum by exploring the extent to which the learning of L2 and the discourse of the SLL classroom mediate Chinese students’ gender awareness and performance. It documented the unseen connections between the micro-level of the students’ face-to-face verbal interactions and the macro-level of the role of learning EFL that can play in students’ construction and negotiation of their gender identity. Data collected in interviews and focus group showed that students frequently referred to culturally idealised gender norms in their discourse. On the whole, boys showed that they had stricter standards in terms of their conception of acceptable ways of behaving as girls and boys in the community, while girls were more tolerant and flexible. On the one hand, it seems that boys experienced more pressure to behave as ideal males in the community than girls. On the other hand, students’ performance in tasks showed that there was a discrepancy between the views girls expressed and their actual performance in interactions. They were indeed trying to exhibit a more liberal image than the actual image they enacted in communication. In addition, as the analysis of Chapter 5 showed, the presence of these idealised gender norms influenced both students’ attitudes towards, and actual learning of, English. Their orientations towards different subjects as reflected by their choice of the arts class or the science class were also highlighted as being influenced by these culturally idealised gender representations. The analysis of Chapter 6 showed that most students in the study exhibited an essentialist view of gender roles and behaviour. They created and delivered stereotypical and unilateral representations of English girls and boys based on the images represented to them through various channels (e.g. media representations, teacher representations) without critically reviewing such images. Students thought of themselves

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as Chinese girls and boys who would behave differently from English girls and boys by definition and treated such essential differences as evident and unproblematic. The context of learning English in the school community gave them an opportunity to realise that such an essentialist notion was problematic. In other words, it provided a bridge to social and mental “spaces” (see section 9.1), which made this essentialist view negotiable as evidenced by the way students behaved in interactions. Taking advantage of the use of EFL in interactions and the specificity of the EFL classroom, students participating in the research generally showed a willingness to experiment with different ways of enacting gender when confronted with unfamiliar ways of behaving as girls and boys in the process of learning English. At the same time, there was evidence that such eagerness and students’ actual enactments were constrained in several ways. Some behaviour was considered acceptable only because it occurred in the school context and using the “mask” of being good language learners. Other constraints were primarily attributable to the Chinese examination system, which mainly examines students’ mastery of linguistic forms; students’ stereotypical and unilateral representations of English girls and boys that made such students feel socially and psychologically distant from them; and their sense of belonging to the mainstream Chinese community, which was partly triggered by their stereotypical gender representations. The analysis of the interactions between pairs provided evidence that students, especially girls, generally made efforts to perform their gendered roles according to what they believed were appropriate English norms. They were trying to converge their own behaviour with the way they thought English girls and boys behave. However, the post-task interviews with them and their discourse in focus groups showed that such role-play was acceptable only in certain “key sites” where students felt it was safe to experiment (e.g. communicative tasks in the EFL classroom, drama competitions in the School English Week, the school dormitory and gatherings with close friends). Otherwise, it was incompatible with the culturally idealised pictures of “Chinese behaviour”. As illuminated in Chapter 8, individual students’ orientation towards different aspects of social identity in the school community in terms of being good students or good girls/boys was shown to vary according to the local situation of the interaction, for example, with the change of interlocutors and the aim of the interactions. Those students who showed an awareness of keeping a balance between behaving as an

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ideal Chinese girl or boy and as a good student learning English well were more likely to achieve success in negotiating identity in interactions. The study revealed that girls and boys made different uses of the educational opportunities provided by the place of EFL in the curriculum at school. Generally, because English is construed as a female subject, girls, who have been traditionally positioned in second place to boys, were more enthusiastic and put more effort into learning English. They thought of learning English as a means of passing examinations, as well as an investment for the future and a means of self-development. Their awareness of using English to impress upon their peers that they were capable, while remaining part of the Chinese community was more developed than that of boys. They were also more overt than boys in their attempts to enact different ways of performing gender. However, it seems that girls had to overcome more barriers than boys. Because of traditional Chinese gender norms, they had to put a lot of effort into making their peers acknowledge the change in behaviour which showed them to be “successful second language learners”, while maintaining their face as “ideal Chinese girls”. The boys, on the other hand, exhibited more traditional behaviour. They tended to rely on their acquired gender advantage (often reinforced by the girls). Indeed, the data showed that the possibility for girls to project themselves as good students and learners without losing their identity as ideal female partners was determined by the way boys performed in the task. From this perspective, the research showed that the educational system in secondary schools in China faithfully reproduces gender inequalities and the EFL class opened up the possibility to make both the students and teachers aware of this. On the whole, the study showed that second language learning pedagogy which integrates CLT can be used as an important tool to open up opportunities for the improvement of gender awareness in cultures where gender and sex are not linguistically differentiated. It demonstrated that the EFL class can be used as a means of opening up a space where adolescents can become aware of gender and play around with this awareness. Although the way students negotiated their gender identity as EFL learners, as displayed in interactions, did not essentially question the power relations in the society outside, from a long-term educational perspective, it is important to help individuals to become aware of it. It could affect or change, for example, the way they think about themselves, the way girls and boys are judged, the way English

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girls and boys are viewed, the way they communicate with others and the way they bring up their own sons and daughters. To sum up, the study identified an educational function of EFL in the curriculum, which is currently neglected and not identified in the curriculum of the schools. It provides the possibility for adolescents to become aware of gendered roles through interactions and serves as a safe space for students’ gender negotiation. Students coming from different personal and social backgrounds may have different ways and strategies for doing it, which is, however, secondary. Several limitations of the research were identified as follows: firstly, the case study strategy employed in the project makes the generalisation of the results to other institutions problematic. The aim of conducting a case study is not to represent the world but to represent the case (Stake 1995). Generalisability in a single case must be interpreted as being generalisable to specific identifiable settings and subjects (LecCompte and Preissle 1993; Cohen, et al. 2003). In the book, by giving the detailed description of the research context and participants, it helped the readers to identify the generalisability of the research findings and define the scope of the research. Moreover, taking a sociocultural approach to the present study, I started with the notion that it is socialisation within a particular society, a particular school and family communities of practices that produce individuals as female or male. Hence, I am also aware that my research may not be transferable to other societies and communities. In the research, I have concentrated on the adolescents at the secondary school level, aged around 16 to 17. On the one hand, it gave me the advantage of focusing on an age when the physical and psychological development of the students tends to loom large in their educational development. However, treating gender as a constructed concept which interacts with other aspects of individual’s identity, it at the same time meant that the research could not say anything about what the educational value of teaching and learning English would have, in terms of gender awareness, for younger or older learners, or for learners at other levels of English such as the university level. To make the research findings more applicable to other contexts, much larger projects, with researchers working in different educational institutions with students at different ages and at different English levels, might be a solution. Although these research results are limited to those students participating in the study who were educated in a school which favours adolescents coming from particular social backgrounds, the school and

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the students that were involved in the research were by no means unique in China. Secondly, the presence of the researcher in the field not only as an observer but also as a participant, on the one hand, allowed me to get to know the other research participants and the whole research context in depth; on the other hand, it raised the issue of observer effect which could not be eliminated (see section 4.4.3). In spite of the above methodological limitations, the research showed that it was possible to use the L2 classroom and the process of SLL to make boys and girls aware of the fact that gender is being constructed and reproduced by them in discourse. Dealing with gender awareness and language education is especially difficult in the Chinese context because the notion of gender is invisible in the language, which implies that adolescents tend to be brought up with an essentialist view of gender identity, as evidenced in the research. The learning of English opens up to students the notion of gender within the curriculum in a way which can be expressed. It offers to them an alternative articulation concerning further issues about which they cannot talk in Chinese. The L2 classroom in this sense can be very precious educationally in terms of helping both teachers and students to think about a number of issues in society and opens up for them new horizons independently of language learning. The meaning of education is to provide individuals with opportunities to begin to understand what is going on in their world. Learning about other societies’ ways of thinking helps students to become more aware of the way they function in their own society. They also learn to position themselves in relation to people from other societies. Seeing students’ gender negotiation locally in the school context, the research tried to discover how the extensions of learning English were created by adolescents. The research showed that the learning of English can make a difference in helping students around the age of 16 to17 to grow into adults in a way which does not cut them off from their family. The EFL classroom was just one of the sites where the battles are taking place. There is evidence in the research that the scope of using the learning of EFL in the curriculum to improve students’ gender awareness and make the awareness accessible to students in the safe space of the EFL classroom was constrained by social attitudes towards gender on the part of parents, teachers, peers and society at large. But at the same time, it also offers opportunities for the future as society evolves (see section 5.3). The more open the attitudes towards gender and the more they know about English, the more that the “space” for learning English can

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be expanded and used in terms of gender negotiation and improvement of awareness. The fieldwork of the research also showed that interventions directed towards attracting student’s attention to gender roles and the way they behaved in interaction in English highlight the educational value of learning EFL in relation to improvement of gender awareness. The effect of participating in the research had a transformative effect on the students. Some students voluntarily pointed out in interview that before they took part in the research, they had never thought of the gender issue as an issue at all, especially in relation to EFL learning. However, after they were involved in the study, they gradually realised that the gender issue was as an important daily issue, which concerned them, could be talked about and was different from sex issues from many perspectives. F6 stated, “For me, my principal aim in learning English is to pass the examination. Moreover, I also want to know more about other countries. Other than this, I don’t think too much about other aspects (of learning English). If you had not come here and discussed these issues with us, we would not have realised them.”1

In this sense, the research itself helped students to improve both their gender and language awareness. Their consciousness was activated in terms of both using English as a useful tool, and the EFL classroom as a useful arena for improving gender awareness and modifying gender performance if necessary. Lakoff (1975) once suggested that EFL teachers should pay close attention to the ways in which language practice and performance may be gendered, which was documented by current research. Although my work is not specifically concerned with the training of teachers in relation to gender awareness, it opens up the issue of the importance of making teachers sensitive to these issues in their initial and in-service training, which could be a subject for future research. It is hoped that this study can provide EFL teachers and educators in China with some useful educational and pedagogical information in relation to teaching practice, teacher training, and raising language and gender awareness. It is also 1

F6: “៥ᄺд㣅䇁ϔϾᰃЎњ㗗䆩ˈ䖭ᰃ᳔䞡㽕ⱘDŽ঺໪䗮䖛ᄺ㣅䇁ⱘ䆱Ꮰ ᳯᇍϔϾ೑ᆊ᳝ϔϾ᳈⏅ࠏⱘњ㾷ˈ✊ৢ݊Ҫᮍ䴶ᛇᕫϡᰃᕜ໮DŽ 㽕ᰃᙼ ≵ᴹ䖭䎳៥ӀѸ⌕䅼䆎䖭ѯϰ㽓ˈ៥Ӏ䛑ϡӮ⊼ᛣࠄDŽ”

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hoped that Chinese EFL learners can gain helpful information from the research, for example, by increasing their awareness of using the L2 classroom to realise different ways of performing gender and employing it as an educational tool for appropriate behavioural change. “The cultural reproduction of gender identity appears to be a deep unconscious process which is unlikely to be broken. However, there is still the possibility of change through recognising one’s own habits of thought, perception and action, which potentially could lead to behaviour change” (Arnot 2002:49). The EFL classroom, especially in a CLT context, can be seen as a location for adolescents to become conscious of differences across gender and the way society and school force them into particular roles and to act in particularly ways. Finally, it is hoped that researchers in the field of gender and second language education can find some valuable insights from my study for their further research orientation.

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APPENDIX A EXAMPLE OF DAILY CLASSROOM SEATING ARRANGEMENT Appendix A-1 Daily seating arrangement of class A (science class) (Altogether 54 students in the class, of which 16 are girls (F) and 38 are boys (M))

Note: as shown above, the seating in class is arranged into four large groups. The two groups in the middle sit next to each other and there is no aisle between them. The location of each group changes every two weeks. For example, if group 4 is located near the door this week, in two weeks’ time, the whole group will be moved to the place where group 1 is located this week. Meanwhile, group 1 moves to the place where group2 used to be located and group 2 moves to the place where group 3 used to be located. Group 3 moves to the place where group 4 was originally located. As shown above, girls (F) and boys (M) may sit as deskmates once they are moved into the middle part of the class.

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Appendix A-2 Daily seating arrangement of class B (arts class) (Altogether 53 students in the class, of which 42 are girls (F) and 11 are boys (M))

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APPENDIX B DESCRIPTION OF THE FOUR TASKS

Task 1 Talk with your partner freely on any topic that you are interested in.

Task 2 Christmas Day is coming. You and your partner are going to organise a Christmas party for the whole class. You can discuss the following issues: when and where you want to hold the party; who you want to invite to the party; what activities you are going to carry out during the party; whether you are going to prepare gifts for the attendees, if yes, what gifts you would like to prepare; others… Notes: (1) You are welcome to discuss any other related topics that were not mentioned above to organise the party. (2) At the end, you two should have a clear party arrangement.

Task 3 Father’s Day and Mother’s Day are two festivals celebrated in Western countries and they have also become more and more popular in China. Discuss with your partner: (1) Whether it is necessary for us to celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in China? Why? (2) If necessary, in what ways do you think it is the best to celebrate the Festivals; what gifts you would like to prepare for your parents? Below is a list of gifts for you to look at for reference purposes. List of possible gifts: a purse; a handbag; a pen; a mobile; clothes; a bunch of flower; a card made by yourself; watching a film together; others…

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Notes: (1) After negotiation, you two have to come to a final agreement on the topic discussed; (2) It does not matter if your gifts are not in the list above.

Task 4 One of you should describe the picture and the other should draw the picture according to the partner’s description. Notes: (1) negotiate who is taking the role of picture holder and picture drawer by yourselves; (2) the picture holder should not show the picture to his/her partner.

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Appendix B

APPENDIX C EXAMPLES OF QUESTIONS IN THE SEMI-STRUCTURED OUTLINE FOR PRE-TASK INTERVIEW WITH INDIVIDUAL STUDENTS

(The outline is only for reference purposes, some questions were modified in the process of conducting each interview. Moreover, some new questions were also added in the process according to students on-site responses to previous questions) 1. About the science class and arts class (1.1) Why did you choose arts class/ science class? (1.2) What do you think of the imbalance of the ratio of girls to boys in the arts and science classes? (1.3) Have you ever heard of the saying that boys should go for the science class and girls should go for the arts class? If yes, what do you think of it? (1.4) If you now have another opportunity to select, would you change your decision (of class choice)? Why? 2. Knowledge of the way English girls and boys behave (2.1) How much do you know about the way girls and boys in native-English-speaking countries behave? (2.2) What’s your impression of the way girls and boys in native-English-speaking countries behave? Can you give any precise examples of why you think they are like this? (2.3) Where did you learn the information? Where does your impression come from? (2.4) What do you think of the way they behave? (2.5) Do you think it has influenced the way you behave? (2.6) Have you ever tried or thought of trying these ways out? If yes, on what occasions did you want to behave differently?

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Appendix C

3. Other gender related issues (3.1) What do you think of the seating arrangement in the class? (3.2) Do you have opportunities to communicate with different sex students in the EFL class? (3.3) How do you imagine your future? 4. About students’ experience of learning English at school (4.1) How many years have you been learning English so far? Do you like learning English? (4.2) What’s your aim and goal in learning English? (4.3) What’s your experience of English learning so far, for example, the way the teacher organises the class and delivers the lesson? (4.4) What forms of communication do you normally experience in the EFL class? (4.5) What’s the ideal EFL teaching that you want to experience? (4.6) What role do you think the English teacher should play in your learning of English? (4.7) Are there any differences between English classes and other subject classes, for example, the way teachers deliver the class, the opportunities teachers provide for students to communicate with each other? (4.8) Do you behave differently in English classes and other subject classes? (4.9) Are there any differences between the way EFL teachers treat girls and boys? If yes, what do you think about these differences? Do they influence the way you behave in English and your attitudes towards EFL learning? (4.10) Do you intend to study or live abroad in the future? 5. About ‘Friends’ (5.1) Have you watched ‘Friends’ before? (5.2) What do you think of this TV series? (5.3) Do you have any general comments on the six main characters?

APPENDIX D EXAMPLES OF GUIDELINE QUESTIONS FOR FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSIONS

(The outline is only for reference purposes; some questions were modified in the process of conducting each focus group. Moreover, some new questions were also added in the process according to students on-site responses to previous questions. In addition, questions asked which specifically related to selected scenes from ‘Friends’ shown to students on site were not included here. See section 3.4.3 of the thesis for examples of these types of question) 1.

To see how students respond to the male and female characters when watching it (1.1) Can you comment on those six main characters respectively? What do you think of the way they behave? (1.2) Of the six characters, who do you like best? If you could choose, who would you want to be most as a girl/ boy? 2.

To see how students respond to this television series and the episode shown in particular. Do they perceive it in a critical way and how much do they treat it as if it is ‘the truth’? Do they question the kind of representation it is when watching it? Do they hold an essentialist or constructivist views of gender roles and behaviour? (2.1) Which part of the show attracts you most? Why? (2.2) Some people say that this sitcom truthfully depicts life among singles. They feel like they are part of the group sometimes. What do you think of it? (2.3) Some people say this sitcom affects the way people think about life. What do you think of this? (2.4) Do you think it reflects real American society? Why? How much do you think it reflects real life in society? Is it consistent with

262

(2.5) (2.6) (2.7) (2.8)

Appendix D

what you already know about American society or the way that you thought American girls and boys should behave? Are you looking forward to types of the life described in the show? Why? Will you behave in the same way as the characters do in your daily life? Why? Is there anybody around you who behaves in that way? How will you feel when you see people around you behaving in that way? If the six characters are coming to live with you, what would you think of it?

APPENDIX E TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS FOR COMMUNICATIVE TASKS AND FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSIONS

Appendix E-1 Transcription conventions applying to both English and Chinese 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

// abrupt interruption … untimed short pause (micro pause) [ beginning of an overlap ] end of an overlap Ėrising intonation Ęfalling intonation 噗first rising, then falling tone 嘙 嘙 a passage of talk which is quieter than the surrounding talk : a colon indicates an extension of the last sound or syllable and more colons such as ‘ma::ny’ prolong the sound further 10. = two equals signs: no interval between adjacent utterances, the second being = latched immediately to the first without overlapping it 11. The equals sign is also used to link different parts of a single speaker’s utterance when those parts constitute a continuous flow of speech that has been carried over to another line 12. Capital letters in bold: an utterance, or part thereof, that is spoken noticeably more loudly than the surrounding talk (i.e. raised volume) 13. (( … )) description of useful phenomena accompanied 14. (… ) single parentheses: items automatically omitted by participants 15. […] utterances that have been left out of the excerpt by the researcher 16. R: researcher 17. F: female student 18. M: male student

264

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Appendix E

Fs: females together Ms: males together ‘Others’: other students in the group ‘Several’: several students in the group ‘All’: all students in the group Arabic numbers ahead of each utterance: turn number Shaded letters: important expressions in the excerpt

Appendix E-2 Additional transcription conventions due to translation from Chinese to English 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

? either an interrogative tone or a question ! either an animated tone or an exclamation BBButterance in an overtlyemphatic tone (see ‘REALLY’ in excerpt 7-3 for example) ‘hehe’: sounds accompanied with a mild laugh, translated from the Chinese word ‘੉੉’. It either indicates embarrassment (see excerpt 8-1 for example) or a relaxing tone and harmonious atmosphere (see excerpt 5-2 for example) ‘en’: sound which stands for agreement in Chinese Enclosed alphanumeric: facilitates reading of English translation in relation to the original Chinese expression.

APPENDIX F SELECTED COMMENTS ABOUT RACHAEL

Appendix F-1 Original Chinese 1R: 䖭എЏ㽕䆆ⱘᰃ Rachael, ԴӀᇍ ཌྷ᳝ҔМॄ䈵৫˛ 2Several: Rachael ህᰃ䗗ီˈ੉੉ ˄ ˄ϔ䍋ュ˅ ˅ 3F15: ࠾ֵ⫼व䙷↉㒭៥⬭ϟॄ䈵ᤎ ⏅ⱘķ 4R: ᇍཌྷ䖭ϾҎⱘᗻḐԴӀ᳝ҔМ䆘 ӋDŽ 5F10: ཌྷ㱑✊‫خ‬ᕫᕜᏂˈԚᰃ䖬ᰃሑ ࡯এ‫خ‬ᕫ⣀ゟ㞾ЏĸDŽ 6R: Դ୰⃶䖭⾡ᗻḐ偀˛ 7F10: ᘽ

English Translation 1R: This scene talks mainly about Rachael, do you have any impressions on her? 2Several: She escapes from the wedding ((all students laugh together)) 3F15: The scene she cut off her credit card leaves me with a deep impressionķ. 4R: Do you have any comments on her? 5F11: Though she did quite badly at work, she still tries to be independentĸ. 6R: Do you like this character? 7F10: Yes.

266

Appendix F

Appendix F-2 (1)

F21: ៥᳔୰⃶ Rachael, ᳔䕏ᵒˈህᰃৃҹϡ⫼ᛇˈ߮ᓔྟ ⫳⌏↨䕗ᆠᒊˈ✊ৢ㒣ग़ϔϾ䖛⿟䭓໻ˈᄺӮ⣀ゟ⫳⌏DŽ䖭 ḋ៥ᛳ㾝↨䕗ད. ཌྷгᕜⓖ҂ˈ੉੉DŽ F21: I like Rachael best, she leads the easiest life among them; she does not need to think too much. At the very beginning, she is quite rich, born in a rich family, then she experiences the process of growing up and living on her own. I think this is quite good. Besides, she is also quite pretty, hehe.

(2) F24: Rachael ཌྷऩ㒃ⱘᕏᑩķ, ៥ᕜ୰⃶ཌྷ F24: Rachael is indeed innocentķ. I like her a lot.

APPENDIX G SELECTED COMMENTS ABOUT MONICA

Appendix G-1 Original Chinese R: ԴӀᇍ Monica ᳝ҔМॄ䈵˛ F8: ↨䕗ᔎᙡķ F19: ៥ᛳ㾝ཌྷ೼䙷ϔᐂҎЁད‫ڣ‬᳝ ⚍໻ྤĸⱘᛳ㾝DŽ Others˖ᇍᇍᇍ F22: ᗻḐད‫ڣ‬ᕜᔎ⹀Ĺⱘ䙷⾡DŽ

English Translation R: What impressions do you have of Monica? F8: She is quite doughtyķ F19: It seems that she is the big sisterĸ among these people. Others: Yes, yes F22: It seems she is quite toughĹ Others: yes, yes, yes.

Appendix G-2 Original Chinese 1R: Monica 2M4: ⋐䕷ķ 3M3: Ҫ੠ Rachael ᳝⚍ড䖛ᴹⱘᛣ ᗱˈཌྷৃ㛑㛑࡯↨䕗ᔎϔ⚍৻ 4M22: ᕜ䞢㳂ĸ 5M21: 㛑࡯དˈॼ㡎དˈཇᔎҎĹDŽ 6 R: ԴӀ୰⃶䖭ḋⱘཇ⫳৫˛ 7 All: ϡ୰⃶!

English Translation 1R: What do you think about Monica? 2M4: Bold and vigorousķ 3M3: She is like the opposite Rachael who is more capable. 4M20: Quite unrestrainedĸ 5M21: (She has) good ability, good at cooking, super womanĹ. 6R: Do you like girls like her? 7All: No!

APPENDIX H SELECTED COMMENTS ABOUT ROSS

Appendix H-1 Original Chinese 1R: ԴӀᇍ Ross ᳝ҔМॄ䈵˛ 2F16: 催ᄺग़ˈৃ㛑೼ⶹ䆚Ϟ㳂ढ़ᆇ ⱘˈাᰃ೼⫳⌏Ϟⱘ䆱ৃ㛑᳝⚍䯂乬 ķDŽৃᰃ៥㾝ᕫҪᰃϔϾᕜ᳝㗤ᗻⱘ ҎDŽབᵰᰃ߿Ҏⱘ䆱ˈህৃ㛑ϡᜓᛣ 䇈ཌྷྏᄤˈㅵ䛑ϡㅵˈԚҪ䛑ϔⳈ䎳 ೼Ҫⱘৢ䴶ˈ㽕‫خ‬ҔМџᚙˈҪ䛑䰾 ⴔཌྷDŽᛳ㾝䖭ϾҎ䴲ᐌԧ䌈DŽ 3F24: ᕜ᳝䋷ӏᖗˈԚᰃᕜឺᔅĸDŽ 4M9: ᳝⚍ཇᗻ࣪Ĺ= 5F6: =ᇍ! ᇍ! ˄ ˄ゟ偀㸼⼎ৠᛣ˅ ˅ DŽ

English Translation 1R: What impressions do you have of Ross? 2F16: High academic qualification. He may be good at academic work, but there are some problems with his personal lifeķ. But still I think he is quite patient. If it was another person, he might not want to even mention his ex-wife, but he follows her all the time and accompanies her when she needs him, I think he is quite considerate. 3F24: He is responsible but he is quite cowardlyĸ. 4M9: A little bit feminineĹ= 5F6: =Yes! Yes! ((Show agreement immediately))

Gender Construction and Negotiation in the Chinese EFL Classroom

269

Appendix H-2 Original Chinese 1R: 䞠䴶ϡᰃ᳝ 3 Ͼ⬋⫳௯ˈҹԴӀ ཇ⫳ⱘ㾖⚍ᴹⳟˈԴӀ᳔୰⃶䇕ˈ㾝 ᕫ䇕᳔↨䕗᳝儙࡯? 2Several: 䰓ˈ䛑≵᳝DŽ 3F25: 䛑≵ҔМདᛳDŽ 4F12 䙷Ͼ ROSS ໾࿬࿬㜨ķњˈফϡ њˈ੉੉ ˄ ˄݊ҪҎュ˅ ˅ 5R: ᠔ҹԴӀ㾝ᕫҪӀ䛑≵᳝儙࡯˛ 6All: ≵᳝DŽ

English Translation 1R: There are three men in the show. Who do you like best and who do you think is the most charming man? 2Several: Ar? None. 3F25: I don’t like any of them. 4F12: Ross is too womanishķ. I cannot stand him, hehe ((others laugh together)) 5R: So you think none of them is charming? 6All: No

Appendix H-3 Original Chinese 1R: དˈϟ䴶៥Ӏᴹߚ߿䇜䇜䖭ϝϾ ⬋⫳㒭Դ⬭ϟᴹⱘᘏԧॄ䈵DŽ佪‫ˈܜ‬ Ross 2M1: ཇᗻ࣪ķ 3F1: ᇣᄽᄤ⇨ĸ 4F27: ᕜᑑ咬Ĺ 5F26: ᑨ䆹ᛳ㾝㳂㒚ᖗĺⱘˈᑨ䆹↨ 䕗᳝㗤ᖗĻ৻

English Translation 1R: Now let’s talk about your general impressions of the three males respectively. First, Ross. 2M1: Womanishķ 3F1: Childishĸ 4F27: FunnyĹ 5F26: It seems he is quite cautiousĺ and patientĻ.

(with the use of four communicative tasks to elicit data)

Observation

Data collection tools

Main purpose of the activity To explore: (1) students’ performance of gender in interaction and their communicative gendered self; (2)students’ actual behavioural reactions to their gender representations of English girls and boys

Length of data 19 recordings of pairwork (each lasts for 35 to 50 minutes)

Participant Students in pairs with the female researcher as observer

Type of data

Audio-recordings of students’ verbal interactions and fieldnotes of contextual information and non-verbal interactions

Appendix I-1 Summary of the main research activities and data collected that were entered into final main datasets

SUMMARY OF RESEARCH METHODS AND DATA COLLECTED IN THE STUDY

APPENDIX I

Task follow-up interview

(with the use of one episode of American TV series ‘Friends’ to elicit data)

Focus group discussion

Interview

Pre-task interview

Audio-recordin gs of discussion of ‘Friends’ and fieldnotes of contextual information and non-verbal interactions

Audio-recordin gs of interviews and fieldnotes of contextual information and non-verbal behaviour

To explore: (1) students’ representations of ideal gender characterisations and girls and boys in English countries; (2) nature and resources of their learned and constructed viewpoints on girls and boys in English countries;(3) students’ claimed reactions to the images they learned and constructed about boys and girls in English countries; (4) advantages and problems student met in constructing and negotiating gender in English; To articulate different individuals’ views and to hear the dominant viewpoints of the community and to see whether this viewpoint was compatible with individual’s views in one-to-one semi-structured interviews; To discover students’ self-positioning as they oriented themselves more towards the student/learner aspect or gender aspect of identity; To uncover the gap between personally gendered self and communicatively gendered self.

To explore: (1)students’ rationalisation of their own interactional behaviour in tasks; (2) experience of working with same-sex students and opposite-sex students; (3)their negotiation of self-positioning in performing the tasks between being Chinese girls/boys learning English and students at school learning English.

38 recordings (each lasted around 20 to 30 minutes) 8 recordings (each lasts around 40 to 60 minutes)

Individual girl or boy with female researcher

Small groups of students (ranging from 6 to 10 students in a group) with the researcher as the group leader

To explore: (1)students’ representations of ideal gender characterisations; (2)students’ personal and social selves in terms of being a girl or boy; (3)advantages and constraints students met in negotiating gender as EFL learners; (4)general viewpoints of English girls and boys; (5)sources of student representations of English girls and boys; (6)background information about gender-related issues and the EFL learning and teaching situation students experienced

38 recordings, (each lasted around 30 to 50 minutes)

271

Individual girl or boy with female researcher

Gender Construction and Negotiation in the Chinese EFL Classroom

Observation (with the female researcher as observer)

Appendix I

Non-EFL class observation of mainly Classes A and B (including mathematics, Chinese, physics and chemistry classes) Extra-curricular activities (e.g. English Week Activity)

Long-term EFL class observation of Classes A and B

Warm-up observation of EFL classes and ongoing observations of students’ and teachers’ daily school life Fieldnotes of observation

Types of data

To explore general information about EFL teaching and gender-related issues in the school (e.g. school policy in relation to EFL teaching; seating arrangement, the ratio of girls to boys in each class; teachers’ behaviour and attitudes towards girls/boys; obvious behavioural differences between girls and boys; daily contacts between girls and boys); To help selection of Classes A and B from the three grades To explore both academic and non-academic information about the selected student participants, as well as information about class organisation and EFL teaching practice in the classes; To help the sampling of the student participants in the classes and the design of the tasks being used in the research

Students and EFL teachers (including students and teachers in all the grades)

To explore the specific nature of the EFL class

To explore (1) more information about girls and boys’ behaviour and performance in English; (2)information about the school policy and atmosphere, especially that related to EFL learning

Students and non-EFL teachers in the classes Students involved in the activities

Students and EFL teachers in Classes A and B

Main purpose of the activity

Participants

Appendix I-2 Summary of supplementary research activities and datasets

Data collection tools

272

Formal interview with 3 school leaders (2 were in charge of the EFL learning in the school)

Researcher’s research diary

Ongoing interviews

Formal interview with 18 EFL teachers and headteachers (6 males and 12 females including the EFL teachers in Classes A and B) Formal interview with 10 non-English teachers Informal interview with students in Classes A and B Audio-reco rdings of the interview

Individual school leader with the female researcher

To explore: (1) the specific characteristics of the EFL class; (2)more information about student participants

Individual teacher with the female research Individual students in the classes with the female researcher

To record and trace the progress of the research (for example, the preparation and organisation of each research activity, the participants involved in each activity, the labeling of equipment used in data collection, the problems encountered in data collection and how they were solved, the new or revised research questions in each activity, the researcher’s own emotional feelings in conducting each activity, and the preliminary data coding and analysis)

To explore information about the school’s policy on EFL teaching and gender issues, as well as school leaders’ attitudes towards it

To explore: (1) more background information about EFL teaching and learning in the class, as well as gender issues; (2) more information about the selected student participants; To help the sampling of pairs of students and the use of ‘Friends’ in discussion; To help other students feel that they were involved in the research

To explore: (1) information about teachers’ aims and goals of EFL teaching; (2)their own experience of learning English; (3)their awareness of gender issues in relation to EFL learning; (4)more information about student participants; To help design the communicative tasks to be used

273

Individual teacher with the female researcher

Gender Construction and Negotiation in the Chinese EFL Classroom

Appendix I

Documents (e.g. students’ academic record; English textbook, the New National English Curriculum Standard and so on)

274 To enrich background information on EFL teaching and learning, as well as individual students’ English performance

APPENDIX J SELECTIVE FINDINGS FROM THE TASKS IN THE MPHIL PROJECT

Conversation task

Decision-making tasks

Picture-description task

1) When same-gender students worked together, the communication between them was more interactive and deeper; 2) When it came to a similar topic, the same-gender pairs discussed the topic in greater depth than the mixed-gender pairs 1) As for the dialogues developed in the same-gender pairs, they were more competitive than those in the female-male pairs. Lots of fierce argument could be seen in these pairs; 2) On the whole, comparing with the same-gender dyads, students in female-male pairs found it easier to achieve a final decision in completing those two decision-making tasks. 1) When female students took the role of describing the picture, they paid far more attention to the details of the picture, while boys were more likely to describe the picture in a brief way; 2) On the one hand, the vocabularies used by the female students in this task were far more varied than those of the male students. They were more likely to take this task as a platform to put the words they had learned into practice. On the other hand, when girls wanted to describe something whose exact English expression they did not know, several strategies were used to solve this problem, like paraphrasing

276

Picture-description task

Appendix J

the words, code-switching etc.; 3) Girls’ tendency to pay attention to specific things in the picture could also be clearly observed when they played the role of drawer in those female-male pairs. They asked for more detailed descriptions of the things in the picture, while the male students, when playing the role of drawer, seemed to ask more questions about general things.

INDEX

accommodation, 17, 152 act of identity, 22 administrative class, 40 alignment, 174

communicatively gendered self, 21, 231 communities of practice, 19, 22-25, 164, 226, 237

annual English Week, 38

confidentiality, 85-86

anonymity, 85-86

constructivist view, 61, 119, 140,

arts class, 39, 40, 47, 71, 79, 89, 107, 108-118, 234

141, 227 content analysis, 71

big woman, 78, 91, 93, 94, 100, 216

context-sensitive approach, 13, 196

case study, 9, 33-36, 237

conversation analysis, 66, 67

Chinese gender, 4

culture shock, 139-140

Chinese research context, 26-31

data collection, 44-64

choice of task partner, 185

data elicitation, 44-64

communicative language teaching

decision-making task, 50

(CLT), 6, 11, 18, 30-31, 37, 39,

discourse analysis, 67

48, 119, 135, 159, 220, 221,

English gender, 4

225, 227, 236, 240

ego permeability, 140

communicative tasks, 3, 6, 31, 37, 39, 43, 45, 47, 48, 49-52, 56,

emergent subject positioning, 183, 191, 199, 210, 218

57, 59, 66-69, 89, 111, 136, 137,

emotional weight, 148

142, 146, 150-154, 157, 161,

essentialist view, 28, 61, 119, 120,

166, 177, 178, 181, 182-183,

129, 140, 158, 221, 228, 229,

185-191, 196, 198, 200, 203,

234, 235, 238

204, 205, 211, 212, 222, 223,

ethical issues, 83-86

225, 226, 230, 235

ethnography, 34-36

278

Index

extra-curricular activity, 48-49

group representative, 183, 191-195

“face”, 176, 177, 188

ideal female characterisation, 90-

fieldnotes, 47, 48, 51, 52, 57, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 88 fieldwork, 35-36 focus group, 44, 55, 58-64, 65, 6971, 74-76, 80, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88

101 ideal gender characterisation, 32, 59, 69, 117 ideal male characterisation, 101102 illocutionary acts, 67, 198

footing, 184, 196, 203

informed consent, 84-85

free-conversation task, 50

interview, 52-57, 71-74

“Friends”, 55, 56, 59, 60-63, 69-70,

“key site”, 177-181, 235

72, 73, 75, 82, 90

labelling, 128, 138, 229

gender, 3, 4, 5, 9, 76, 224

language assessment, 224-226

gender awareness, 17, 35, 55, 56,

language awareness, 176, 230, 239

120, 121, 136, 160, 161, 176,

language of membership, 29

181, 219, 220, 225, 227, 229,

language shock, 139

236-239

lexical choice, 28, 105, 145, 146,

gender construction, 4, 5 gender identity, 2, 4, 6, 8 gender negotiation, 3, 4, 5, 9, 41, 182, 197, 237, 239 gender performance, 6, 17, 35, 130,

157 linguistic space, 149, 220, 223, 224, 226 little woman, 93, 97 media representations, 131

138, 161, 175, 182, 188, 195,

mental space, 221

239

observation, 40-43, 45-52

gender role, 4, 17, 21, 26, 61, 67,

“open”, 120-123

106, 119, 128, 140, 150, 158,

otherisation, 128, 134, 138, 228

175, 195, 210, 221, 222, 224,

over-accommodation, 157

227, 232, 234, 239

pair-grouping, 203, 231-233

generalisation, 74, 132, 237

pairwork, 41-42

grammar-translation approach, 30,

paralinguistic features, 105

39

participants’ reactivity, 37, 50, 51

Gender Construction and Negotiation in the Chinese EFL Classroom peer influence, 109, 110, 111, 156, 164-172, 181, 185-188, 191, 209, 223, 226, 236, 238

279

sex, 4, 5, 10, 28, 76, 77, 224, 236, 239 shift positioning, 213

peer network, 97

social distance, 139, 140, 143, 162

perlocutionary acts, 67

social identity, 2, 182, 193, 196,

personally gendered self, 21, 231 physical space, 221, 222-223

203, 209, 217, 222, 235 social role, 19, 21, 66, 89, 96, 97,

picture-description task, 50, 212

172, 181, 183, 184, 213, 222,

pilot study, 88

231

positioning, 68, 164, 168, 183, 193, 200, 218 poststructuralist approach, 9, 18 pre-task interview, 56 psychological distance, 139, 140, 144, 162

social sex, 28, 224 social space, 220, 222 socialisation, 16, 17, 26, 103, 105, 110, 114, 130, 150, 221, 237 socially gendered self, 21, 169, 231 sociocultural approach /

psychological space, 221

perspective, 7, 16-18, 24, 34,

reliability, 86-88

54, 88, 237

repositioning, 184 representations of English girls and boys, 69, 11, 9

sociolinguistic approach / perspective, 3, 11, 23, 24, 138 “space”, 31, 149, 151, 164, 179,

research diary, 65, 71

220-224, 226, 227, 235, 236,

research context, 35, 74, 88, 237

237, 238

researcher effect, 81-83

speech community, 10, 23

research setting, 37-39

stereotypical views, 61, 114, 115,

science class, 39, 40, 79, 107, 108117, 228, 234 self-positioning, 73, 96, 149, 169, 183, 184, 195, 196, 212, 226 sense of belonging, 10, 22, 128,

117, 134, 174, 191, 227, 229 stereotyping, 138, 228, 229 strong woman, 78, 94, 95, 96 style of delivery, 143, 147, 155 super woman, 91, 92, 94, 100, 129

140, 142, 153, 162, 167, 182,

task follow-up interview, 57

226, 235

task variable, 49

280

Index

teacher training, 227

triangulation, 75, 83, 87

template, 132, 138, 143, 157, 181,

university entrance examination

213 traditional gender norms, 171, 187, 188, 193, 194

(UEE), 36, 40, 112, 135, 150, 159-161 validity, 86-88