Voices Without Words: Doing Critical Literate Talk in English as a Second Language

Voices Without Words: Doing CriticalLiterate Talk in English as a SecondLanguage

JASMINE LUKThe University of Hong KongHong Kong

ANGEL LINThe University of Hong KongHong Kong

Critical thinking is believed to be an essential skill for 21st centurysurvival and therefore has been widely promoted in education. InHong Kong, critical thinking is one of nine generic skills to be devel-oped across all subjects, including English. How students do criticalthinking in ESL, which is seldom used outside school and yet holdshigh social value, has, however, been underresearched. This article isconcerned with how some low-English-proficiency senior secondarystudents in Hong Kong conducted critical talk in English. The studyspecifically investigates how the students used English to expressideas that were first developed in Cantonese (the students’ first lan-guage). Based on a discourse analysis of the criticality and elaborate-ness of the Cantonese and English utterances of one group ofstudents, the authors discuss findings that reveal a significant contrastbetween the students’ more elaborated discourse in Cantonese and arestricted discourse in English characterised by reduced content andlimited lexicogrammatical structures. The findings call for moreattention to the impacts of linguistic proficiencies on critical thinkingperformance of ESL learners and to how the communicative gaps incritical literate talk revealed in ESL learners’ first and second lan-guages can be gradually reduced.doi: 10.1002/tesq.161

Critical thinking (CT) is a buzzword for 21st century education andglobal survival (Fisher, 2001). Despite being presented as a U.S.-

centric and Western culture–specific social practice and mode ofthinking (see, e.g., Atkinson, 1997), CT has been widely promoted inbasic and higher education in recent decades in many countries and

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cities in Asia, such as Singapore (National University of Singapore,2003), Malaysia (Curriculum Development Centre, 1989), and HongKong (Education Commission, 2000). Generally understood as a formof “intellectually disciplined process of actively and skilfully conceptu-alizing, applying, analysing, synthesising or evaluating informationgathered from, or generated by observation, experience, reflection,reasoning, or communication as a guide to belief or action” (Scriven& Paul, 1987), critical thinking is believed to be an essential skill thatwill enhance the competitiveness and employability of young people inthe global arena.

However, performance in CT by Asian students has often been neg-atively evaluated in the Western academic world. Some researcherseven conclude that, because it is a Western approach, CT is incompati-ble with corresponding patterns of knowledge construction in Asiancultures that stress conformity and rote memorization (see Floyd,2011). A few recent scholarly reviews and studies on CT performanceof Asian students argue that English proficiency is one of the majorfactors that leads to an impression of a comparative lack of “critical”quality in the academic work of Asian international students (e.g.,Floyd, 2011; Paton, 2011; Tian & Low, 2011). Consequently, profi-ciency in English and performance in critical thinking have becomethe major concerns of many education policymakers and researchers,particularly in postcolonial settings such as Singapore, Malaysia, andHong Kong, where English continues to be an official language andan academic lingua franca (e.g., Paton, 2011; Rashid & Hashim,2008). Because very little empirical research linking CT engagementand second language proficiency of Asian students is available, thisarticle aims to contribute to this gap by presenting qualitative dis-course data showing how language proficiencies might have affectedCT performance of a group of secondary students in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, the crucial role of English in empowering learnersto cope with a range of generic skills, including critical thinking, hasbeen emphasized since 2001. Even though English in Hong Kongfunctions largely as a foreign language in terms of intracommunitysocial and interpersonal communication, it is an official languagealongside Chinese and is learnt as a compulsory second and interna-tional language in schools. English is also the key medium of instruc-tion in most of the top universities. With trilingualism and biliteracybeing the language education goals,1 senior secondary students in

1 The biliterate and trilingual language education goal for Hong Kong was spelled out inthe first policy address of the first chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administra-tive Region in October 1997. The younger generations in Hong Kong are expected tobe proficient in two written languages (standard Chinese and English), and three spokenvarieties (spoken English, Cantonese, and Putonghua).

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Hong Kong are expected to display CT abilities in both Chinese andEnglish. All these point to the need for students to develop the abil-ity to use English for higher order cognitive activities, including criti-cal thinking. The new Senior Secondary English Curriculumimplemented in 2009, in addition to emphasizing critical thinking asan overall aim, includes an elective module titled Learning EnglishThrough Popular Culture which is designed to increase students’ crit-ical thinking, creativity, and (inter)cultural awareness through read-ing and analysing popular cultural texts. However, an interview studywith 12 Hong Kong school teachers including native and nonnativeEnglish speakers reported in Luk (2012) reveals some scepticismabout this curriculum objective. As these teachers note, many stu-dents in Hong Kong seemed to lack the linguistic and cognitive skillsto conduct and/or display critical thinking in English, even though“they might be able to express a few ideas in Cantonese” (p. 257).One of the teacher participants, LTM-he, who was a novice but fullyqualified English teacher, even admitted his own “inadequacies inexpressing complex cultural ideologies in English” (p. 259). As anonnative-English-speaking teacher, he compared his CT ability tothat of his native English teacher (NET; local term for native-English-speaking) colleagues:

I guess they (the NET teachers) are more able to do critical thinkingthan us.... What they could do in ten minutes, we probably need halfan hour to digest.... I feel that my English is probably at Grade 11 or12 compared to that of native speakers.... I increasingly feel that mybrain functions differently in Chinese and English, that is, in English itseems to function at a lower level.... In this respect, I feel as inadequateas my students. (p. 259)

In LTM-he’s reflection (originally expressed in Cantonese), lan-guage and thinking are tightly connected. When his English profi-ciency is inferior to his NET colleagues, he perceives his ability tothink critically is also inferior. His use of the inclusive pronouns usand we suggest that it might be a phenomenon common to other Chi-nese required to do critical thinking in English. As suggested by Luk(2012), such feelings of inadequacy among nonnative-English-speakingteachers might explain why many English lessons in Hong Kong tendto focus on vocabulary comprehension and cultural information trans-mission, with little in-depth discussion of cultural issues with students.Evidence of English lessons in Hong Kong with little criticality, origi-nality, and creativity is also reported in Lin and Luk (2005) and Mok(2009).

We contend that an inability to express critical thinking in a sec-ond language should not be conflated with an inability to think criti-

CRITICAL LITERATE TALK IN ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE 3

cally. Because very little qualitative research exploring how Asian stu-dents perform CT in a second language is documented, this articleaims to fill this gap with data showing how a group of senior sec-ondary students (Grade 11) in Hong Kong conducted critical talkaround popular cultural texts in both their first (L1) and secondlanguages (L2). The data reveal a wide gap between the students’L1 cognitive maturity and their L2 communicative resources.Although the students were able to display evidence of critical think-ing in their L1, their subsequent English presentation revealedhighly reduced content and lexicogrammatical structures. In view ofthe crucial role of English for academic and social success in HongKong, the findings of this study call for more attention to how thecommunicative gaps in critical literate talk, as revealed in the firstand second language spoken usage of ESL learners, can be graduallyreduced.

Before presenting the data, we review literature that discusses con-troversies about the role of critical thinking in teaching English as asecond or other language (TESOL). We make particular reference tostudies concerning critical thinking development in Hong Kong andpresent arguments supporting the need to develop critical literate talkin ESL.

CRITICAL THINKING AND TESOL: THECONTROVERSIES

As an ideological construct, CT has invited diverse definitions.Weinstein (1993) discusses different notions of CT, such as metacogni-tion, rationality, argumentation, informal logic, and reflective scepti-cism in the form of a great debate. He reconfigures the debate andhighlights two key theses: In addition to acknowledging the role oflogical and rational argument in CT, he emphasizes the role of lan-guage as an instrument of critique and as a source for an analyticalunderstanding of reasoning.

The interweaving relationship between language and thinking ren-ders language curriculum a natural arena for the development of criti-cal thinking. Atkinson (1997), however, cautions against CTinstruction by TESOL educators. Atkinson asserts that CT is a U.S.-cen-tric and culturally specific social practice and mode of thinking. Basedon empirical evidence collected from Japanese and Chinese students,Atkinson further argues that it is difficult for “individuals from culturalsystems that manifestly differ from mainstream U.S. culture” (p. 79) tobenefit from thinking skills instruction because of their contrasting

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norms of self-expression (e.g., a tendency to avoid vigorous verbalinvolvement in debate) and divergent perspectives on the use of lan-guage as a means of learning (e.g., a tendency to appeal to memoriza-tion and choral recitation as learning strategies). As verbal evidence ofcritical thinking is often privileged as “the surest sign that someone isa critical thinker or that critical thinking has taken place” (p. 84), CTinstruction may actually disadvantage ESL learners from cultural tradi-tions that do not emphasize vocal critique.

Atkinson’s (1997) article invited a barrage of criticisms and coun-ter-arguments in a series of response articles published in TESOLQuarterly in 1998 and 1999. These response articles, although appeal-ing to different arguments and evidence, almost unanimously supportTESOL educators’ role in preparing students to participate fully inglobal communities in which the ability to think beyond their currentframe of understanding is of paramount importance to “promote tol-erance and social justice” (Benesch, 1999, p. 573) and to sharpenawareness of “the relationships among power, knowledge, and lan-guage” (Hawkins, 1998, p. 132). Evidence of Asian ESL students’ abil-ity to handle critical thinking was reported in Davidson (1998),Macken-Horarik (1998), and Hammond and Macken-Horarik (1999).

As mentioned before in this article, the validity of the argumentthat Chinese students are deficient in critical thinking due to culturaltraditions has also been challenged in more recent reviews and empiri-cal studies. For example, Tian and Low (2011) published research lit-erature about Chinese students’ CT performance at universitiesabroad and have identified subject area knowledge and target lan-guage proficiency as two key debilitative factors. Rashid and Hashim(2008) found significant correlations between critical thinking abilityand English language proficiency in a group of Malaysian undergradu-ates who scored lower than their U.S. counterparts in a critical think-ing test. Floyd’s (2011) study involved the use of a developed criticalthinking appraisal instrument in which a group of postgraduate Chi-nese students took half of a test in Chinese and half in English. Thefindings indicate that CT performance is more difficult in a L2: the 55participants performed significantly better when taking the Chinesehalf. Whereas Rashid and Hashim’s (2008) and Floyd’s (2011) studiesinvestigated the CT performance of undergraduate and postgraduatestudents in ready-made discrete item tests developed in the UnitedKingdom and the United States, the present study presents naturallyoccurring discourse data collected from a group of senior secondarystudents in Hong Kong, revealing qualitative differences in Chineseand English CT discourses. Literature related to the development ofCT in the Hong Kong school curriculum is reviewed in the nextsection.


CRITICAL THINKING IN THE HONG KONG SCHOOLCURRICULUM

In Hong Kong, CT is identified as an essential generic skill that“helps students to draw out meaning from given data or statements,generate and evaluate arguments and make their own judgement”(Curriculum Development Council, 2001, p. xix). Such an understand-ing of CT reflects the North American–based notion of CT discussedin Luke (2000), which focuses on higher order comprehension. Thedefinition of CT in Hong Kong was expanded in the 2007 English Lan-guage Curriculum and Assessment Guide to include the ability to “recog-nize and challenge . . . unstated fundamental assumptions,permeating value orientation and ideologies” (CDC-HKEAA, 2007,p. 136), which reflects perspectives of what Luke describes as Austra-lian-based critical literacies (focusing on social, cultural, and economicpower where people actually use texts).

Despite the fact that CT has been incorporated in the Hong Kongsecondary school curriculum since 2001, there have been very fewdocumented studies on its implementation and impacts on students’thinking skills. A well-known pioneer study conducted by Fok (2002)focused on CT instructional materials development and teacher pro-fessional development. Although Fok did not indicate the schoolsubject for the study, the language medium and the nature of thetexts used suggest that the intervention study took place in the Eng-lish curriculum. Data from student interviews reveal positiveresponses from the junior secondary students to the interactive wayof learning afforded by the CT activities, during which they “had theopportunity to voice their views and test their opinions” (p. 90). Theproject, however, also revealed the teachers’ lack of confidence inimplementing CT instruction due to insufficient professional train-ing.

Another practice-oriented study similar to Fok’s (2002) was reportedin Wong, Chan, and Firkins (2006). The authors, who were teachers ina secondary school with academically below-average students, enacted aschool-based literacy program across both English and Chinese underthe professional guidance of a university professor. Their program par-ticularly drew on Freebody and Luke’s (1990) four resources model toengage each student in experiencing texts as a codebreaker (codingcompetence), text participant (meaning-making competence), text user(pragmatic competence), and text analyst (critical competence). Theseare critical reader response skills students require in the new senior sec-ondary curriculum. Wong et al. highlight the students’ positive evalua-tion of their increased confidence in reading in both languages, even

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though the mean rating for Chinese seemed significantly higher thanthat of English.

A more recent study by Mok (2009), however, reports negative evi-dence about the implementation of CT in the junior secondary Eng-lish curriculum. Through nonparticipant classroom observations oftwo English language teachers’ writing lessons, Mok found almost noevidence of CT elements. The teacher–student interactions were “pri-marily teacher-led and dominated, allowing students little space fornegotiation” (p. 276). Mok calls for less exam-oriented mechanicalpractices, more teacher modelling of critical thinking and attitudes,and more space for students to express their own ideas.

None of these Hong Kong studies, however, focused on how thestudents actually performed in critical thinking. Fok (2002) and Wonget al. (2006) report only perceptual data of gains from students andteachers. How students express critical thinking in English as a secondlanguage compared to Chinese as their first language merits furtherresearch.

In investigating the impacts of linguistic proficiencies on students’CT performance, the present study focuses on talk as evidence of criti-cal thinking. The meaning and significance of the need to developcritical and elaborated literate talk is discussed next.

LITERATE TALK AND ELABORATED DISCOURSE

The focus on talk as evidence of critical thinking in the presentstudy was informed by Wallace’s (2002) configuration of literate talkand critical literacy. The term literate talk (or literate English) refers to akind of talk that is most like formal written English. Drawing on Bern-stein’s (2000) pedagogical discourse model, Wallace argues that ESLstudents need to master a “more elaborated, vertical discourse” (p.104) in English for success in school and global contexts. Accordingto Bernstein, an elaborated and vertical discourse takes the form of “acoherent, explicit and systematically principled structure” in organiz-ing knowledge that is scientific and specialized, and is distinguishedfrom the “everyday” or “common sense” knowledge characterizing thehorizontal discourse (p. 157). Reflecting an elaborated and vertical dis-course, literate talk involves “not talk as social action, but ‘the acquisi-tion and development of more complex conceptual structures andcognitive processes’” (p. 113, citing Wells & Chang-Wells, 1992).

In Wallace’s (2002) configuration, literate talk and critical literacyare mutually reinforcing. The need for ESL learners to deploy literateEnglish to critique a range of texts is crucial because such ability isconducive to the development of critical language awareness (CLA) in


English. Fairclough (1992) defines CLA as the awareness of “how lan-guage might be differently shaped to meet needs beyond those whichare closest and most familiar to [learners]” (p. 112). Such awarenessechoes Hawkins’s (1998) idea to engage ESL students in “metathink-ing about the relationships among power, knowledge, and language”so as to mitigate against the “cultural hegemony” of English, and Haw-kins considers this metathinking to be “critical thinking in anothersense” (p. 132). In view of the global dominance of English, Wallacejustifies the need to give priority to the development of literate Eng-lish with perspectives from critical pedagogy (see Freire, 1968/1996),which is concerned with achieving social justice through education.“[I]f English is to be constantly recreated to serve emancipatory ratherthan oppressive goals,” Wallace argues, “[an] attenuated, reduced Eng-lish cannot serve this purpose” (p. 111). ESL students need to developcommunicative resources in English to enable them to talk back or writeback as a legitimate speaker in global contexts. In the next section, weexplain how our study was conducted.

THE PRESENT STUDY

This study aims to investigate how a group of Hong Kong seniorsecondary Year 2 (Grade 11) students with low English proficiencyconducted critical literate talk in both their L1 and L2. The study spe-cifically focuses on (1) whether conducting a group discussion in L1would facilitate the subsequent L2 formal presentation and (2)whether the students displayed any qualitative differences in their lit-erate talk in the two languages.

The data were collected as part of a research project that investi-gated the integration of culture and English language education atsenior secondary level in Hong Kong by engaging students in readingpopular cultural texts. Three schools representing high, mid, and lowbands of academic achievements were invited to participate in the pro-ject through our own academic networks (we are university professorsspecializing in classroom research). Two teachers (one NET and onelocal) were nominated by each school to participate in the study inthe form of a teacher inquiry and professional development project,which is similar to the action research paradigm emphasizing “partici-pant-driven and intensive opportunities [for teachers] to engage ininquiry and reflection over time with colleagues about issues thatmatter to them in the course of their daily work” (Zeichner, 2003, p.302). Data were collected from lesson observations and in-depth inter-views with students and teachers across two school terms (with at leasttwo teaching cycles). Before data collection, we conducted a 1-day

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workshop with the project teachers at which we introduced ideasrelated to how popular cultural texts could be read from a critical dis-course analysis and critical literacies perspectives (e.g., Fairclough,2003; Wallace, 1992). We recommended a critical approach to readingpopular culture to the project teachers because we wanted to proble-matize popular pedagogical practices that use popular cultural arte-facts as devices to present linguistic codes as if they were neutral andvalue-free meaning-making resources. We believe that students shoulddevelop what Kumaravadivelu (2003) calls critical cultural consciousness,or the ability to interpret and reflect critically on the ideologiesembedded in the popular cultural texts in light of the students’ ownprevious knowledge, experiences, and perspectives. Through thisapproach, we hoped that students would become less susceptible topropaganda and misinformation, and that their independent thinkingand creativity would be promoted.

The project teachers were encouraged to work with their colleaguesto adopt and adapt ideas from the workshop that suited their specificpedagogical contexts when delivering the elective module LearningEnglish Through Popular Culture. As researchers, we avoided directlyintervening in the teaching procedures because we believe that teach-ers should exercise professional autonomy in the classroom. However,we encouraged the teachers to inform us of their teaching plans, andsome sought comments from us. The teacher interview data reportedin the next section were collected from such a teacher–researcher dia-logue. All research lessons were video-recorded with instant postlessonreflective feedback collected from the teachers. Between each teachingcycle, we also conducted interviews with the project teachers to obtaintheir reflective comments and ideas for constructive changes.

The data presented in this article were collected from the firstteaching cycle2 in a low-English-proficiency school situated in a subur-ban area in Hong Kong populated by low-income families. The stu-dents attended a class taught by a native English speaker, Liz (apseudonym), a New Zealander who had worked in the school as aNET3 for about six years, focusing on school-based English curriculumdevelopment. Apart from teaching one class of senior students, Lizsupported the English panel in the design and production of innova-tive learning activities for the other English teachers. The class thatLiz taught was academically the strongest in the year level, even

2 The project requested teachers to conduct at least two teaching cycles across two semes-ters. The first cycle focused on experimenting with ideas from the workshop; the secondcycle focused on promoting NET–local collaboration.

3 The NET scheme was introduced in 1998. All government-funded schools in Hong Kongare entitled to recruit up to two NETs to help create an English-rich environment inschools.


though (according to Liz) most of the students were weak in Englishand some lacked motivation to learn better.

THE TASK AND ITS CRITICAL ELEMENTS

Students’ talk data were collected from an advertisement review taskdesigned by Liz to develop students’ oral presentation skills for school-based assessments.4 To facilitate students’ performance, Liz organisedthe students into six small groups to review collaboratively a printadvertisement of their own choice from a pool of advertisements sheprovided. The students were allowed to conduct the discussion in theirL1, Cantonese, but the subsequent presentations in front of the classhad to be in English. It was Liz’s pedagogical belief (strongly sup-ported by us) that students’ L1 can facilitate the L2 task preparationand performance. Such a belief is grounded in Vygotsky’s (1934/1962) conceptualization of L1–L2 interdependence in language learn-ing: “Success in learning a foreign language is contingent on a certaindegree of maturity in the native language. The child can transfer tothe new language the system of meanings he already possesses in hisown” (Cummins, 2000, p. 110).

The advertisement (ad for short) concerned in this article is a Play-boy fragrance. The ad shows mainly black and deep red background col-ours and the language texts are in white. A man and a woman, whoseem to be Americans, and look mature and sexy, occupy the top half ofthe ad, followed by three bottles of the fragrance. Towards the bottomof the ad, the brand name Playboy is presented in conspicuous cursivewriting with the logo marked at the end of the brand name. Under-neath the brand name is a slogan: NEW FRAGRANCES FOR WOMEN.

To help students with diverse abilities in English, Liz prepared twoversions of guidelines, each with 12 guiding questions beginning withidentification of the factual components of the ad (e.g., logo, brandname) and leading to questions inviting personalized and openresponses. In the guidelines for weaker students, some half-con-structed sentences with formulaic expressions were provided.

Liz was aware of the module objective of Learning English ThroughPopular Culture to promote students’ critical thinking and (inter)cul-tural awareness. Her teaching was also guided by the English languagecurriculum documents containing the CT definition and key descrip-tions mentioned in earlier sections (CDC-HKEAA, 2007, pp. 135–136).

4 School-based assessment was implemented in the Hong Kong secondary English curricu-lum in 2005. The assessment focused on evaluating students’ oral proficiency throughgroup interactions and class-fronted formal presentations.

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According to Liz, among the 12 guiding questions, 3 were designed topromote CT and intercultural awareness:

Q9: (cultural/social issues) What is currently trendy? Is the product trendy?Would Hong Kong people like this ad? Why? Why not?

Q10: (personal response) Do you or other teenagers like this ad? Why? Whynot?

Q11: (gender issues) Do you think there are any gender issues? What are they?

During the pre-observation interview, Liz expressed her understand-ing that these questions may not have fully reflected the curriculumexpectations. Liz explained that it was her intention to design a simpli-fied form focusing on personal reader responses for the following rea-sons:

To be honest, they are not used to critical thinking, and . . . also, theyare not used to expressing themselves, they often don’t have the vocab-ulary to be able to express themselves in such a detailed way. In termsof social norms, things like that, it’s very difficult for them to expressthemselves. They’re not used to English, and I don’t have a second lan-guage in the classroom.

The concerns expressed by Liz about students’ difficulties in con-ducting and/or expressing critical thinking in English due to low pro-ficiency echo those reported in Luk (2012). In Liz’s case, being anative English speaker who did not speak the students’ L1 furthercompounded the problem because she would not be able to help stu-dents formulate their Cantonese ideas into English. Despite these con-cerns, Liz supported the need to provide opportunities for students todevelop the ability to conduct higher order thinking in English, andshe hoped that the small-group discussion in the L1 would enable stu-dents to collaborate to generate ideas and ways to express them inEnglish more effectively.

THE DATA

The group discussions and class presentations were transcribed ver-batim following a broad-based transcription design without fine detailsof the intonation and voice qualities of the utterances. The transcribeddiscourse was analysed along two parameters: the criticality and the elab-orateness. Evidence of criticality was identified with reference to the de-scriptors of critical thinking for senior secondary students in the HongKong English language curriculum (CDC-HKEAA, 2007, p. 136), which


generally focus on the ability to make reasoned judgements; to distin-guish facts from opinions; and to identify and challenge hiddenassumptions, fallacies, permeating value orientations, and ideologies.Evidence of elaborateness was identified with reference to distinguish-ing features between elaborated and restricted discourses espoused inBernstein (1964), focusing on lexical predictability and variations, andthe range of syntactic alternatives.

In this article, we present data from one group of students whichwe had recorded in both the group discussion and the class presenta-tion. There were four students in the group: Mikki (M), Daniel (D),Sally (S), and Hong (H), all pseudonyms. Among them, Mikki wasidentified by Liz as representing a low-level student, based on her Eng-lish results. We did not receive comments on the other three from Liz,but according to Liz she deliberately placed a stronger student in eachgroup to help the weaker ones. From our observations, however, it isdifficult to tell who was a stronger member in Mikki’s group. Neverthe-less, the group received guidelines for the stronger students.

GROUP INTERACTION

In this section, we first present three extracts from the group discus-sion related to Q9 and Q105 in the task guidelines. The title of eachextract represents our synopsis of the piece of talk in focus. The itali-cized expressions in arrow brackets are broad translations of the stu-dents’ Cantonese expressions. Expressions in square brackets show thecontextual information while those in parentheses show uncertainhearing.

Extract 1 Playboy’s corporate image (Duration: 04:16–05:18)

In Extract 1, the students are making evaluative comments on the ad.

Turn Speaker Utterances

62 M 其實個picture同埋個個既 . . .既圖片,所發放既訊息其實好悶囉<In fact the picture and the, the photo, the message conveyed is actually veryboring.>

63 D 你會唔會揀D咁既野<Will you choose such thing?>

64 M 都系一男一女其實好多廣告都系一男一女<It’s just about a man and a woman; a lot of ads actually are about a man and awoman.>

5 The group did not talk about Q11 as they did not seem to understand the meaning ofgender in the guiding questions.

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65 S 香港人呢會唔會鍾意<Do Hong Kong people like this . . . ?>

66 M 香港人點解唔會鍾意呀?其實有數據顯示其實係..香港人係鍾意買Playboy架<How can Hong Kong people not like it? Actually some statistics show that HongKong people actually like to buy Playboy.>

67 H 下?Playboy咩用品先得架?好多隻架<What? What products from Playboy? There are many.>

68 S 佢好多野架喎其實<It has many things indeed.>

69 H Playboy都系情趣用品,真架,Playboy雜誌係三級架<Playboy are products of romance and sentiments. That’s true! Their magazines arecategory 3.>

70 D 全部都三級?用品都三級?<Everything is category 3? Even consumable products?>

71 M 下?唔系呀,我見過有D friend...<What? It shouldn’t be, I have seen some friends...

72 H Playboy呢外國成棟野呢,有個D女郎係完全唔著衫既, 即系佢..佢成棟野個D人係...<Playboy has a whole building overseas where girls do not wear clothes. That is,everybody in the building are...

73 M 下?但系我見過有人用香水係用Playboy架<What? But I have seen people use Playboy fragrance.>

74 H 好正常,一個品牌咋嘛,咁..佢唔揾錢,佢邊度養成班唔著衫既靚女?<That’s very ordinary. It’s just a brand. And if it doesn’t make profit this way, howcan it support a whole bunch of nude beauties?>

75 D It’s a good point.

In Turn 62, Mikki makes a negative comment on the ad (“the mes-sage conveyed is actually very boring”). She provides a justification inTurn 64 (“it is just about a man and a woman”) and implies that thischoice of image was a frequently used technique in ads. Even thoughMikki did not highlight any hidden ideologies and assumptions aboutusing a man and a woman as images on the ad, her comments seemto display a form of resistance to a dominant phenomenon in thecommercial world, that is, such commodities are consumed by good-looking and well-off men and women.

When Sally asks in Turn 65 whether Hong Kong people like Playboy,Mikki replies in the affirmative, and she even tries to appeal to statisticsto support her viewpoint. Then Hong, a male student, expresses hisworld knowledge about the sexy corporate image of Playboy. His identifi-cation of the Playboy magazines as being classified as Category III6 (Turn69) and his information about the nude Playboy girls overseas (Turn 72)suggest that he has likely been paying close attention to news about Play-

Extract 1 (Continued)

6 In Hong Kong, media publications including movies, magazines, and books are classifiedinto three main categories, with Category III considered to be suitable only for adultsabove the age of 18.


boy. In Turn 74, Hong seems to be also drawing on his world knowledgeof economics to justify why Playboy has to make profits by appealing topeoples’ sexual interests. Hong’s knowledge about Playboy reflects onthe one hand his personal interest in sex-related artefacts, which is verycommon among male adolescents (also note Hong’s attempt to make asex-related fun comment in Turn 113, Extract 2). On the other hand,his response to Mikki’s query about the sexual connotations and thepopularity of Playboy’s perfume in Hong Kong (Turn 74) shows Hong’sability to identify corporate image building as a kind of money-makingstrategy. In this sense, Hong seemed to be able to recognize the perme-ating value orientations and ideologies hidden in the ad.

Extract 2 The informativeness of the ad (Duration: 07:27–08:12)In Extract 2, the students are still indecisive about whether Hong

Kong people like the product.


112 M 但我覺得如果Playboy就佢..即做其他產品,即唔一定系岩其他人口味,咁佢依家.依家-<But I think if Playboy, their, that is their other products, that is they don’tnecessarily suit other people’s taste. Now they, they . . . >

113 H [quietly but audible] -for example, its condom?114 M [stops briefly while H made the comment] 無所謂架,咁佢依家整到呢個香水

係究竟 [D and H were joking among themselves, unintelligible to theresearcher]究竟符唔符合到香港人既口味咋嘛 . . .佢依家係個問題就系問緊佢整緊呢隻香水出黎究竟符唔符合到香港人既口味咋嘛<It doesn’t matter. And they now made this perfume, whether, whether it suits HongKong people’s taste, the question right now is about whether this perfume from themsuits Hong Kong people’s taste.>

115 H 系呀,咁如果答唔符合..<Yes, so if we say not suitable . . . >

116 D 咁咪符合到囉。[3 secs] 咁我地未聞過我地唔知道佢符唔符合架喎<So, just say suitable. [3 secs] But we have not smelled it how do we know if it issuitable?>

117 M 咪就系話囉,呢個廣告根本就俾到既信息唔夠多,... 咁咪求其答囉<That’s what I said. This ad hasn’t given enough information.... Just answer thequestion with something.>

118 H 有咩廣告可以聞到<Do we have ads that we can smell?>

119 M 4D [laughs]120 S (有個???可以聞到)... [laughs]

<(With a ??? we can smell it)>121 M 4D有觸覺架,是但啦咁咪話..吸引囉咪話吸引囉,之前..之前話個廣告個個都系

用一男一女架啦<4D provides a sense of touch. Anyhow, just say attractive, say attractive. Earlier, Isaid every ad uses a man and a woman>

Mikki seems to be leading the group in thinking whether Hong Kongpeople would like the Playboy product in focus. Hong and Daniel seemto be ambivalent and uncommitted in their stance (as evident in the

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expression “so, just say . . . ” in Turn 116). A turning point comes after a3-second silence in Turn 116. Daniel, who earlier displayed a “don’t givea damn” attitude, suddenly asks a critical question that reveals the absur-dity of their point of argument: How can one know whether one wouldlike a perfume without any olfactory experience? Daniel’s question hasalso instigated interesting turns about how a print ad on perfume couldbe more “informative.” Mikki in Turn 117 criticizes the insufficient infor-mation about the product in the ad. Hong then interrogates Mikki’s crit-icism in Turn 118 by questioning the practicality of the expectation toobtain sensory experience of a perfume through a print ad. Hong’squestion then prompts Mikki and the others to draw on their worldknowledge of 4D technology. Overall, the frequent mutual interroga-tions among the students of each other’s comments seem to reveal thecurriculum expectations for students to “draw warranted conclusions,. . . and make reasoned judgements” (CDC-HKEAA, 2007, p. 136).

Extract 3 Hong Kong people’s tendency to worship Western cultures(Duration: 08:57–10:40)

In Extract 3, the group continues to argue whether and why HongKong people would like the product, and they seem to have diverseopinions.


137 M 咁咪話囉其實..其實個香水都唔係好符合到香港人既口味囉。<Then just say, in fact, in fact, the perfume is not very suitable for Hong Kongpeople’s taste> [the Cantonese particle 囉 denotes a perfunctory attitude tothe task]

138 S 唔係架,岩架。可以話符合到架,因為平丫嘛。<Not like this. It’s right. It can be suitable, because it is cheap.>

139 D 吓?呢D好貴架喎!<What? This is very expensive!>

140 M 唔係,個問題就系話根本係就咁睇呢個廣告根本就唔知佢個價錢丫嘛,因為唔知佢價錢,二來我會覺得係西方人既口味多,可能香港人好崇尚西方人既口味,個感覺會系..好 . . .高級好高尚囉。<No, the question is the ad has actually not given any information about its price.Because the price is not known, and secondly, I think that this shows the taste of theWesterners. Maybe Hong Kong people highly worship Western people’s taste; thefeeling could be very . . . high class, very noble.>

141 D 個人觀點既啫。<personal viewpoints only>

142 M 系既話都要講架唔通唔講咩?<if so, we need to talk about it, should we not?>

143 D 咁你可以.. 如果你鍾意講你可以正方反方你都講得一D。<then you can . . . if you like, you can talk about both the positive and negativesides of the argument>

144 S 通識咁。<like liberal studies>7

7 Liberal studies is one of the four core subjects in the new senior secondary curriculumin Hong Kong. It aims to develop students’ ability to conduct critical thinking. The sub-ject is taught through the students’ L1 in most schools in Hong Kong.



145 M 我大程度上同意。<I agree to a large extent>

146 S 咁你覺得香港人鍾唔鍾意呢樣野?<Then do you think Hong Kong people would like this thing?>

147 M 鍾唔鍾意呀...[7 secs] 咁咪鍾意啦,咁咪話鍾意囉,咁話佢..<Whether they like it or not . . . [7 secs]. Say “like” then, just say they like it, saythey . . . >

148 D [off-task talk]149 M 我咪話如果話鍾意既咪話佢比較追求西方人既口味,比較崇洋,咁佢崇洋就會好

追求西方既文化同埋佢個產品囉。<I will say, if they like it, I will say they want to pursue Western people’s taste. Theyare more likely to worship things foreign. As they worship foreign things, they willeagerly pursue Western cultures and their products.>

150 H 講得簡單D啦,崇洋你識唔識講呀?<Can you say it in simple terms? Do you know how to say “worshipping the West”?>

151 M 崇洋 <worshipping the West>152 H 英文呀! <in English!>153 M er . . . Hong Kong was very like for er.154 S Their culture 咪得囉 <is okay>155 M The culture of other country156 H 繼續喇。用英 . . .你要全英文講

<Just continue. Using Eng . . . you need to use all English.>

In Turn 140, Mikki comes up with a justification about why HongKong people would like Playboy by proposing a popular ideology inHong Kong: “Maybe Hong Kong people highly worship Western peo-ple’s taste; the feeling could be very . . . high class, very noble.” Mikkigives long speeches in Turns 140 and 149 to elaborate her ideas. How-ever, her argument is challenged by Hong in Turn 150 to be too com-plicated and difficult to express in English. In Turns 153–155, we seehow Mikki and Sally try to co-construct an utterance in English inresponse to Hong’s urge for them to express their ideas in English.We see how Mikki uses a simple word like to express her idea of wor-ship. This instance shows that some students like Hong may avoid com-plicated ideas due to language obstacles. It also shows that studentsmay not be able to convey the most precise version of their thinkingin a second language in which they are not proficient enough.

Overall, the students, particularly Mikki and Hong, displayed someevidence of critical thinking in the group discussion as presented inthe extracts. For example, Mikki seemed to show evidence of resistinga reading position constructed by the text: that the product is used bywell-to-do and good-looking young men and women. She alsoattempted to support her judgements on the product by referring tostatistics and the availability of certain information. Mikki and Hongalso displayed the ability to recognize unstated fundamental assump-tions, permeating value orientations and ideologies. Hong identified

Extract 3 (Continued)

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the profit-making intention behind any image-building devices by abusiness company. Mikki drew on a common social psychology ofHong Kong people that would explain why Hong Kong people maylike the product: worshipping Western cultures and pursuing Westerntaste because things foreign were considered to be of a higher classand a better taste. These pieces of evidence show that, when con-fronted with a sociocultural artefact such as an advertisement, teenagestudents such as Mikki and Hong are able to “reflect on the social cir-cumstances of their production, on why they come to us in the formthey do, and on the variable ways their meanings may be received indifferent cultural contexts” (Wallace, 2002, p. 108). As shown inExtract 2, the students were also able to interrogate and critique eachother’s viewpoints to ensure that judgements and conclusions werewarranted and reasoned.

In terms of language use, the students’ utterances were inevitablycolloquial and not elaborately structured due to the spontaneity of thetalk. The students were, however, able to employ a range of syntacticstructures and vary their use of vocabulary to describe related mean-ings. Below are some examples:

Range of syntactic structures.

• Interrogative: e.g., “How can Hong Kong people not like it?”(Turn 66)

• Conditional: e.g., “If it doesn’t make profit this way, how can itsupport a whole bunch of nude beauties?” (Turn 74)

• Causal–reason: e.g., “It can be suitable, because it is cheap.”(Turn 138)

• Contrastive: e.g.. “What? This is very expensive!” (Turn 139)

• Additive/elaborative: e.g., “But we have not smelled it how dowe know if it is suitable?” (Turn 116); “That’s what I said. Thisad hasn’t given enough information.” (Turn 117)

Lexical variation (expressions often used interchangeably in HongKong).

• 情趣用品 <products of romance and sentiments> is a euphemisticterm for 三級 <Category III, see note 4)

• 女郎 <ladies> / 靚女 <pretty ladies>

• 用品 / 產品 / 品牌 <products> <brand products>

• 高級 <high class> / 高尚 <noble>

• 崇洋 <worshipping the West> / 崇尚 / 追求西方人既口味 <regard-ing highly or pursuing Western people’s taste>


Because the students conducted the group discussion in their L1,whether they were equally able to display such evidence of criticalityand range of syntactic and lexical variations in their L2, English, inthe oral presentation is something we explore next.

ORAL PRESENTATION

The oral presentations were conducted as a whole-class activity afew days after the group discussions. All students were observed to bepresenting based on notes they had prepared beforehand. In the fol-lowing paragraphs, we focus on analysing the presentations of Mikkiand Hong because the two of them displayed the most evidence ofcritical thinking during the group discussion. Our analysis focuses onthe criticality of the content and the elaborateness of the languageuse.

Mikki’s Presentation

Mikki was the second one to present, after Daniel. Below is the tran-script of her speech:

Unit Utterances

1 Thank you. And I think . . . eh . . . the . . . eh the advertising I think just . . . show usthe woman and the man . . . and just perfume.

2 So I think eh . . . eh . . . just er use the dark colour and the woman and the man Ithink the perfume just for . . . the adult.

3 And the target audience, we . . . we can look at . . . look at the sentence, look at thesmall sentence, that’s eh . . . just for the women.

4 So we can . . . we know that’s perfume is . . . just for the woman. [pauses for3 seconds]

5 And the information . . . we just eh . . . look at the logo and the slogan and the onesentence,

6 so we . . . [looks at Sally] so we don’t know the detail of this advertising. Yeah.

Throughout the presentation, Mikki was making negative commentson the ad through four key points: (1) “just use the dark colour”; (2)“just show us/use the woman and the man”; (3) “just for the woman”;and (4) “we don’t know the detail.” Mikki, however, did not elaboratethe impacts of using dark colour and showing a man and a woman onthe quality of the ad. She did not include the points about the ad’spredominant focus on Western taste to suit Hong Kong people’s ten-dency to worship things foreign, or the lack of information about theprice and scent of the fragrance.

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In terms of language use, only 38 out of these 97 words are con-tent words (nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs), and a fewwords were repeatedly used. For example, I think, woman/women, andlook each appeared four times, and perfume three times. The wordjust appeared seven times. It seems that Mikki was relying on just toshow the inadequacies of the ad. Most utterances were syntacticallyill formed. For example, the topic–comment structures in Units 3and 5 followed Chinese syntactic structures, and lacked the expectedcoordination in English. Most utterances began with the first personsingular (I) or plural (we) subject pronouns and were declarativeand descriptive in nature. Utterances connected with so (Units 2, 4,and 6) failed to show the expected causal–consequence relationship.

Hong’s Presentation

Hong was the last one to present. His presentation was often diffi-cult to comprehend due to his consistently low-level tone, and fre-quent grammatical and phonological deviations from the norms.

Unit Utterances

1 eh . . . I think . . . don’t feel . . . eh . . . it’s . . . I don’t like it because . . . eh . . . it isfor woman.

2 And I think the other teenagers . . . eh . . . will don’t like it because the . . . becausethis only for the woman to use.

3 And it’s (smile) [smell?] not good I think.4 eh . . .咩呀 <what?> . . .5 eh I think the woman use this and it can get the boy (fan) [friend?] and to have a lot

of people to like it.6 It’s . . . I don’t read the sen . . . sentence.7 I don’t know the target audience.8 And . . . just two people in the picture . . . and lack of trendy.

Hong’s ideas were similar to Mikki’s: “it is for woman” (Unit 1);“just two people in the picture” (Unit 8). There were two new ideas:“it can get the boy (fan) [friend]” (Unit 5) and “lack of trendy” (Unit8). It should be noted that the word trendy was provided in the guidingquestion. Liz had taught it as an adjective to describe popular culturalproducts. Hong’s use of the word shows that he was indeed learningfrom the lessons. However, Hong did not elaborate why having justtwo people was not trendy. His world view about how Playboyexploited a woman’s image as a brand-building and money-makingstrategy, expressed in the group discussion, was not mentioned here.Overall, the low intelligibility of his speech, the nonstandard syntactic


structures, and the lack of elaboration adversely affected the clarityand effectiveness of his message.

In terms of language use, Hong uttered 87 words, out of whichonly 33 were content words. Like Mikki, Hong relied on a limitedrange of vocabulary and sentence patterns. For example, the patterndon’t + verb was used five times, woman and I think were each usedfour times, and because three times. The semantic connection betweensome utterances (e.g., Units 6 and 7) was unclear. Unit 5 seemed tosuggest a causal–reason relationship but, unlike Units 1 and 2, noproper connectors such as because were used. In Units 5 and 8,clauses were inappropriately linked with and, resulting in fragmenta-tion and incoherence.

Overall, the oral presentations by Mikki and Hong did not containthe evidence of criticality identified in the group discussion. Eventhough both were reading from notes or scripts during the presenta-tions, their utterances lacked the level of elaborateness expected of aformal and literate speech.

Due to practical constraints, we were unable to compare the L1 andL2 talk of the other groups. However, from their English presenta-tions, we found that most students made similar comments on differ-ent ads, for example, “It is very boring,” “It is very colourful,” and “Itis very interesting.” The lexical predictability and the narrow range ofsyntax of their speech show features of a restricted discourse.

CONCLUSION

In the previous sections, we presented two sets of discourse datashowing how a group of low-English-proficiency students in HongKong conducted critical literate talk, first in a small group using Can-tonese (L1), followed by a whole-class presentation in English (L2).

A comparison of the students’ performance in the group discussionand whole-class presentation seems to reveal a significant gap betweenthe students’ L1 cognitive maturity and L2 communicative resources.In the L1, the students displayed evidence of critical thinking (e.g.,resisting dominant ideologies, recognizing unstated assumptions andpermeating value orientations, making reasoned judgements). Theywere more able to elaborate their opinions with justifications. In theL2, the students’ speeches were reduced in content and limited inlexicogrammatical structures. Students such as Hong showed not onlyfrequent grammatical inaccuracies, but also hesitations over pronunci-ations of words including friend and smell. These findings seem to sug-gest that advance preparation in small groups in the L1 might haveenabled students to brainstorm and generate critical ideas, but might

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not have contributed to the criticality and elaborateness of the subse-quent L2 formal presentations.

The differences between the students’ performance in the L1 andL2 seem to reflect Bernstein’s (1964) configuration of the restrictedand elaborated codes of communication. According to Bernstein,speakers may orient to different language codes based on their socialclass. The restricted code was distinguished from an elaborated codeby having a high level of lexical prediction and a limited range ofstructural alternatives. The data from the present study seem to show adistinction between elaborated and restricted codes arising from asym-metrical bilingual resources, even though the students’ imbalancedbilingualism may also be social class–related; students from middleand upper classes tend to have stronger social capital, including Eng-lish proficiency (Lin, 1999).

In investigating the role of linguistic proficiencies in a criticalapproach to texts, Macken-Horarik (1998) asks a compelling question:“Is the critical literacy territory open to all students whatever theirdiverse starting point—their social and linguistic formation?” (p. 74).The Hong Kong students in the present study were able to display evi-dence of critical thinking in their L1, but they were not able to revoiceit or reformulate it in the L2. Some educators may wonder whether itis realistic to expect low-English-proficiency students to conduct criticalliterate talk in English. However, we should not underestimate thenegative impact of such deprivation of literate English developmenton the learners’ school success and life opportunities. In explainingthe crucial role of critical literacies and critical pedagogy, Freire andMacedo (1987) argue that a “prerequisite to the development of apositive sense of self-worth” (p. 151) is to have one’s own voice, butthis voice should not be restricted to the vernacular, and that educa-tors should understand the value of “mastering the standard dominantlanguage of the wider society” (p. 152). In the Hong Kong context,even though Cantonese is a powerful language for everyday formaland informal communications, English remains the dominant code forsocial success and upward mobility. Learners’ failure to master literateEnglish is likely to result in a negative judgement on their overall cog-nitive abilities by their teachers, as evident in Liz’s interview com-ments. LTM-he’s self-degrading reflection on his feeling of inferiorityas a critical thinker in the L2 (Luk, 2012) shows that the L1–L2 com-municative gaps exist even for advanced learners when it comes tohigher order cognitive activities.

The emergence of such communicative gaps might be the result ofa deep-rooted preference for “operations-oriented, meaning-reducedclassroom practices” (Lin & Luk, 2005, p. 85) in English languageteaching, which could reproduce only “the under-privileged lifeworlds


of some lower social class students by reinforcing their restrictive dis-courses” (p. 95). Engaging students in critical reading of popular cul-tural texts, as evident in the findings presented in this article, seems tohave afforded students essential opportunities to exercise creativethinking and self-expressions, even though their L1 cognitive and lin-guistic resources do not automatically translate into corresponding L2successes. It has been noted by Wallace (2002) that foreign languagelearners usually have the ability to deploy well-developed literate talkin critiquing a range of texts from their first language, but that theyare often denied the opportunity to develop such discursive resourcesin the foreign language classroom. Therefore, TESOL educators mustseek ways to help ESL learners bridge the communicative resourcegaps between their L1 and L2.

We believe that TESOL teachers have a decisive mediating role inmodelling not just what it means to be critical in thinking, but the dis-course pathways they go through in expressing critical ideas or talkingliterately in a second language. Teachers can demonstrate how stocksof expressions can be accumulated over time through reading authen-tic texts on similar topics and how information technologies such asonline translation tools can be utilized to construct appropriateexpressions. They should also teach the genre of critical literate talk,such as making reasoned judgements, questioning hidden ideologies,and drawing warranted conclusions. Apart from demonstrating withtheir personal experiences, teachers can also help students stretch thebreadth and depth of their literate L2 discourse by making use of L2texts produced by students to explore with them how their ideas canbe more effectively revoiced from L1 to L2. This often requires a thor-ough understanding of the student’s original ideas, which are likely tobe more precisely expressed in the L1. We therefore believe that abilingual teacher with proficient knowledge of both the students’ firstand second languages will be better able to scaffold the reformulationof ideas from L1 to L2. With this suggestion, we do not mean to denythe contributions of non-Cantonese-speaking native English teachers.We truly feel that teachers such as Liz are valuable assets to the profes-sion because they are willing to move beyond meaning-reduced parrot-ing practice (which is commonly found in working-class schools) andtoward engaging low-proficiency students in creative self-expression.Although native English teachers may lack students’ L1, some bilin-gual local teachers such as LTM-he may feel linguistically inadequatein demonstrating critical thinking in the most idiomatic and sophisti-cated English. Therefore, we believe that teachers, whether native ornonnative, monolingual or bilingual, should pool together their com-plementary linguistic and cultural resources. Through effective collab-oration, these teachers can complementarily perform the role of what

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Kramsch (2003) labels “pedagogical go-between” (p. 30), teachers whoare successful bilinguals with intercultural insights and knowledge thathelps students cross the L1–L2 boundary. Further research shouldexplore how such collaboration could take place.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project was funded by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Spe-cial Administrative Region, China (HKU 749410H). We thank most sincerely theteachers and students of the project school for their valuable contributions. Wealso thank the editor and reviewers for their extremely helpful advice.

THE AUTHORS

Jasmine Luk is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the Universityof Hong Kong. She received her PhD at Lancaster University, in England, and spe-cializes in research related to discourse studies in second language education fromsociocultural and critical perspectives.

Angel Lin received her PhD from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,in Toronto, and is internationally well respected for her research on discourseanalysis, bilingual education, and language policy in postcolonial contexts. She isan associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of HongKong.

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Voices Without Words: Doing Critical Literate Talk in English as a Second Language

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