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Edith Esch

Position/Status

Senior Research Fellow in Language Education

E-mail Address:

eme10@cam.ac.uk

Phone:

01223 767646

Qualifications

Licence et Maîtrise es lettres, Nancy 2, France
MA (Cambridge)
PhD (OU)

Membership of Professional Bodies/Associations

British Association of Applied Linguistics (& International Association AILA)
BAAL Special Interest Group on Africa
BAAL Special Interest Group on Language Learning and Teaching
Association for French Language Studies
National Centre for Languages Advisory Group for Research
Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies: Special Advisory Group for Languages

Profile

Edith Esch is Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education of the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College.

Her main current research is in second language education with a special interest in the influence of the British and French pedagogical cultures in post-colonial contexts and more particularly in multilingual societies in Africa where both are in contact. These sociolinguistic and sociocultural themes in education result from her life-long interest in bilingualism (Harding-Esch and Riley, 1985, 2003) cross-linguistic communication in non-educational contexts (PhD Dissertation), and factors of language change (Jones and Esch, 2002).

Formerly member of the Centre de Recherches et d'Applications Pedagogiques en Langues (CRAPEL), Nancy 2, France, Edith Esch was an Assistant Director of Research in Applied Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics of the University of Cambridge from 1974 until 1990. There, she pursued the notion of learner autonomy and developed the concept of advising for language learning as a new form of teaching appropriate to new technological environments. 'Self-Access and the Adult Learner', CILT, 1994.

In 1990, she was appointed Director of the new Language Centre of the University. She was involved in two major national initiatives, the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP) and the (FDTL) 'SMILE' project, and in two major EC-funded Research and Development projects: HIPERNET and LEVERAGE both aiming to develop the use of broadband networks for language learning and teaching (see R and D page, Language Centre website, http://www.langcen.cam.ac.uk/

E. Esch has served on many committees including the Executive Committee for English as a Foreign Language of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate and the Board of the Institute of Linguists'. Professionally, E.Esch was also actively involved in the creation of the European Association of Language Centres in Higher Education (CERCLES).

She is a frequent rapporteur for ESRC end of award reports and external assessor or validator for research initiatives in a number of European Universities. She is a member of the Conseil Scientifique de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme–Lorraine, and served on the 1996 and 2001 Research Assessment Exercise panels for European Studies.

Academic Area/Links

  • Applied linguistics: Second language learning and teaching
  • Bilingual acquisition, bilingual education and minorities
  • Multilingualism, language planning and developing countries
  • Factors of Language Change
  • Comparative education, pedagogical cultures and plurilingualism

Research Topics

  • Role of the educational system in the development of bilingual identities
  • Role of language education in bi-dialectal settings
  • Comparative approach to the analysis of the French and the English system of education
  • Teaching of reading in post-colonial settings
  • Standardized varieties and an extra-linguistic factors of language change

Current Research Projects

  • Language Education and Pedagogy in English and French-speaking Cameroon: a comparative approach to primary school teachers' perceptions. (British Academy research grant RG48097)
  • Language Education and Empowerment in Pakistan (as superviser of a PhD student from Karachi funded by the Aga Khan foundation)
  • Language Education in Kazakhstan (as International scholar for a Central Asian Research and Teaching Initiative (CARTI) Junior Fellow funded by the Soros Foundation)

Course Involvement

  • M.Phil Research in Second Language Education (RSLE)
  • M.Phil in Educational Research

Publications

[selection since 2001]

Esch, E. (in press) 'Researching Language Education in Cameroun' in: Mpoche, K.and K. Harrow (eds.), Language, Literature and Education in Multilingual societies, Cambridge Scholars Press.

Esch, E., (2008), 'Autonomy ten years on: Clash or Crash?' In: Pemberton, R.et al.(eds.) Autonomy and Language Learning: maintaining Control. Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press.

Esch, E. (2007), 'Français d'ailleurs: the pluricentricity of French Identities?'
in Bennett, W. and Jones, M. (eds.) The French Language and Questions of Identity, London, Legenda Series.

Esch, E. Review of A. Barfield and M. Nix (eds.) Autonomy you ask! (The Learner Development Special Interest Group of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT), Tokyo, 2003, xxiii + 298pp) System, 33 ( 2005) 544-546.

Esch, E. , 2005, 'Representations of English amongst French adolescents in Senegal'. In: Cortese G. and A. Duszak (eds.) Identity, Community , Discourse: English in Intercultural Settings. Berne, Peter Lang. pp 233-265.

Yakoumetti, Androula, Michael Evans and Edith Esch ,( 2005) 'Language Awareness in a Bidialectal Setting: the oral performance and Language attitudes of Urban and Rural Students in Cyprus, Language Awareness, Vol.14, No.4, 254- 260.

Fisher,L. , Evans, M., and Esch, E. (2004) 'Using Computer-Mediated Communication to promote learner autonomy and develop intercultural understanding at secondary level', Language Learning Journal, 30, 50-58.

Esch, E. (2003) 'Le trilinguisme: recherches actuelles et questions pour l'avenir' in : Vers une Compétence plurilingue, Numéro Spécial, Le Français dans le Monde, Clé International. pp 18-31.

Harding-Esch, E. and Riley, P. (2003) The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents, CUP, pp. 1-190. (Revised second edition).

Esch, E. (2002) 'My Dad's auxiliaries' in Jones, M., and Esch, E. (eds.) Language Change: The Interplay of Internal, External and Extra-Linguistic Factors, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter. Contributions to the Sociology of Language.

Esch, E. (2001) 'Disseminating the Practice of Advising: towards a new evaluation framework' in Mozzon-Mcpherson, M. and R. Vismans (eds.) Beyond Language Teaching: Towards Language Advising, CILT: London pp. 25-39.

Plenaries

June 2007: 'English and Empowerment: potential, issues and way forward', CELSE seminar, Aga Kahn University Centre for English Language / Faculty of Health Sciences, Karachi, Pakistan.

2006: 'Home learning, school learning and the role of Language' , International Conference on Language, Literature and Education in Multilingual Societies, Yaounde, Cameroun.

2004: 'TIC i Autonomia Aplicades a l'Aprenentatge de Liingues, Castilló, (Spain).
TAAL Conference

2004: 'Autonomy Ten Years on', Hong-Kong/ Hanzhou , 'Maintaining Control', Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Language Centre Conference