English Teaching: Practice and Critique

The language lessons around us: Undergraduate English pedagogy and linguistic landscape research

Volume 12 Number 2 September 2013

Michael Chesnut (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

Vivian Lee (SOAS, University of London)

Jenna Schulte (University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas)

This narrative article analyses three Korean undergraduate students' experiences conducting a linguistic landscape research project. Linguistic landscape research, the study of publicly displayed language such as billboards and other signs, is a relatively new area of scholarly interest. However, there has been only limited study of using linguistic landscape as pedagogy. This analysis found that, for these students, participating in this project led to a greater awareness of the complex and contradictory relationships between languages, and aided their development as language learners. However, the study also found that the different perspectives of these three students and their Canadian instructor shaped how they viewed these multilingual signs, creating both tension and opportunities for learning.

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