Translanguaging in English Language Teaching: Perceptions of Teachers and Students

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall evaluation

The study in interesting but it falls short of providing the insight it could have provided with a more sophisticated instrument for data collection. 

Research goals and questions

Research question (RQ) 1: "the community": Do the mean the university community of students and teachers? If so, state clearly. 

RQ1: Is it any surprise that English language teachers would assign a high value to English language teaching and learning?? Nothing in the literature review discusses why an English foreign language teacher would not assign a high value to English language teaching. This is not compelling research question for this particular group of respondents, at least insofar as what the literature review presents. 

RQ1: "Monolingual university" is too broadly stated. Do you mean a university in a (highly?) monolingual country? Many countries are bilingual or plurilingual and yet still have a 'monolingual' university. Canada, for example, has the bilingual city of Montreal but each university is 'monolingual' in the sense of official language of instruction. The authors need to adjust this research question/aims: be more specific. It seems that the societal context here is crucial in the description of this university. 

Likewise, what is the typical background of the students at these universities and, in particular, the ones take English language classes? Have they studied abroad? Are they foreign students? These particularities tie in to this concept of 'monolingual university' that the authors have used. 

Missing RQ for the null and alternative hypotheses stated in methods section. See comment below. 

Methods

Value of English language teaching and learning, Item 5: Why does this item ask respondents to speculate about what other students believe/are prepared to do? This does not elicit reliable data.

I don't believe the methods allow the authors to answer Research Question 2 because the items are worded in extremes: "exclusively in English", "'punished' for use of Russian", "both English and Russian can be used without any restriction", "Russian should be strongly minimized", "Russian can be used exclusively to introduce the most difficult language material or in translation exercises". All 'flexible' items are extremes: "no restriction", "strongly minimized", "used exclusively" + [two highly specific scenarios].

Information lacking:

·      Was the survey in English or Russian?

·      Were the participants compensated for participating in the study?

Division of the student respondents into F and FI: "Previous learning experience": This is too general of a description for this group, and does not provide the author with enough information to understand the results in a more meaningful way: Have the students in the FI group chosen to supplement their formal English language education? If so, this indicates some sort of motivation or interest. If not, perhaps being required to participate in informal language education leads to added value of such education. With this limited information, RQ3 is not specific enough and therefore somewhat uninteresting. 

If null and alternative hypotheses are stated (Lines 259-263), then there should be a corresponding RQ. 

Results

Is it any surprise that English language teachers would assign a high value to English language teaching and learning?? Unsurprising results. 

RQ3: Unsurprising results regarding FI group and value of English language, at least with the assumptions we can make based on the very little information collected/provided for this group. 

Copy-editing

Style

Grammar

Table columns mislabeled

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much or the thorough consideration of our article and valuable comments on the content and style of the paper.

1. In RQ 1 we have changed “community” for “university students and teachers”.
2. We find this issue important and requiring investigation taking into account the Soviet period of Russian history when the role of EFL was diminished due to political reasons and especially in the context of the current political situation when even English language teachers might feel frustrated or demotivated. We have added a more detailed description of this situation on p. 4 of the article.
3. By a monolingual university we mean “officially monolingual university”. We have added our understanding of this notion on p.5.
4. In this study we used the same questionnaire for both teaching staff and students and we tried to balance the number of questions addressed to the two groups of respondents, that’s why there were not so many questions about the students’ background. But we will certainly take this recommendation into account in the future research.
5. Following your recommendation we focused on the three research questions and deleted the null hypothesis.
6. Methods – We fully agree that the result in Item 5 reflects subjective attitude. However, Item 5 of the questionnaire is supposed to reveal the vision of the picture in general without focusing on concrete students.
7. We agree that a number of items include some “extremes” but this was done specially to identify the very essence of the language of instruction models, for students and teachers to express their attitudes choosing between the extreme alternatives. This issue will definitely need further research in the Russian context.
8. It is stated in the text that the questionnaire was conducted in English.
9. It is stated in the text that the questionnaire was conducted on a voluntary basis which means that the respondents were not compensated.
10. The division of student respondents in the F and FI groups is important in terms of investigating differences in their attitudes towards EMI and the language of instruction in the Russian context where the general level of motivation for English learning is rather low. Students’ motivation for informal language learning certainly needs further research which is beyond the objectives of this study.
11. Following your recommendation we focused on the three research questions and deleted the null hypothesis.
12. The results are really not very surprising in terms of the expectations concerning English language teachers. However it was an unexpected result that they didn’t express strong belief that the ELT has high value for the students’ career. We reformulated the interpretation of this result on p.10.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents a very interesting study about a very pertinent topic, i.e. (pedagogical) translanguaging and in an under-researched context. It is well-written and organized and well carried out. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your positive review of our article.

Reviewer 3 Report

1. In Introduction, please use more literature to support the argument.

2. Introduction has too much background. It is not possible to highlight why these variables need to be explored.

3. the basis of statistical analysis lacks theoretical support.

4. In Materials and Methods, the course implementation should be described in detail.

5. The statistical analysis should be conducted with variables. The course should be conducted with statistical analysis of variables rather than questions.

6. In Conclusions, the limitations of the study and suggestions for future research should be included.

7. This article is more like a classroom report. It is not up to the quality of a journal article. It is suggested that the article could be revised by referring to more high level journals.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much or the thorough consideration of our article and valuable comments and suggestions.

1. We have increased the number of references in the article.
2. We have reformulated a number of passages to be more explicit.
3. Statistical methods were chosen and applied in keeping with the research objective and the date received.
4. Unfortunately we didn’t quite get what you mean by the course implementation. If you mean the implementation of the questionnaire, it is described in the text of the article.
5. Statistical methods (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and a one-way analysis of variance ANOVA) were applied in accordance with the methodology and the focus on research questions.
6. We have added limitations and suggestions for future research to the Conclusion of the article.
7. We have added some more references to enhance the theoretical background.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have revised the manuscript according to my comments. Therefore, I suggest that this version is acceptable.