Plenary Speaker		Home
Wong Bee Eng is an associate professor in the Department of English at the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia. She obtained her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Essex. She teaches courses in linguistics and applied linguistics. Her main research interests are in the areas of syntactic, morphological and vocabulary development in SLA, discourse studies and second language assessment. She has published of papers (including journal articles) in these areas.
Recent articles
Wong, B. E. & Chan, S. H. (2008). The Acquisition of English Articles by Non-native Speakers. In Jurnal Bahasa Jendela Alam, Vol. 5, pp. 700-714. Wong, B. E. & Chan, S. H. (2008). Contemporary Malaysian English: word innovation through morphological processes. In Graduate Times UPM, Vol. 4 (2), School of Graduate Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, pp. 3-9. Wong, B. E. & Quek, S. T. (2007). Acquisition of the English Definite Article by Chinese and Malay ESL Learners. In Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching (e-FLT), Vol. 4, pp. 210-234.
Book Chapters
Wong, B.E. & Mallan, V. (in press ). Constructing Meaning in a Bilingual Learning Environment: Two Primary Classrooms in Malaysia. Take 1. In Barnard, R. and Torres-Guzman, M. E. (Eds.). Creating Classroom of Learning: International Case Studies and Perspectives. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Mallan, V. & Wong, B. E. (in press). Negotiating appropriateness in the second language within a dual language education classroom setting. Take 2. In Barnard, R. and Torres-Guzman, M. E. (Eds.). Creating Classroom of Learning: International Case Studies and Perspectives. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Wong, B. E. & Liu, J. C. (2008). The Acquisition of Gender, Number and Case in English Personal Pronouns. In Jacobson, R. (Ed.) The Pulse of a Malaysian University. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 101-119.
Constructing Knowledge in Bilingual/Multilingual Learning Environments
Interaction in a learning environment between the teacher and his/her students can vary from community to community. The interaction may be affected by the medium of instruction in the classroom and the culture practised by the community. In terms of the medium of instruction, the language used may be the learners’ or even the teacher’s second or third language. The culture that is practised by the community may affect the ideological practice(s) adopted in the classroom of the same community. Given complexities of this nature, case studies of such interactions can enrich us in terms of the interplay between the language used, the culture practiced, and thus the ideological practices adopted by each of the learning communities studied. The paper presents accounts of interaction in two bilingual/multilingual learning environments. The first is that of a local situation and the second is located in the United States. The objective is to show how learning is mediated in face-to-face interactions in these bilingual/multilingual environments and what can be learnt from such an analysis. The data was collected in classrooms from two local schools and a school in the US. In the local context, classroom dialogues were recorded by the teacher when s(he) was teaching year 4 Science or Mathematics in a national or national type primary school. Each of the interactions of the US data was collected during a year-long study of Read Alouds in a fifth grade classroom. In both contexts, interactions were analyzed to better understand the expectations of the teacher and the learners on what it means to be a good learner. Strategies adopted by the teachers to bring about learning in the classrooms were also identified. The analyses of the teacher-student interactions reveal that different ideological practices seem to be at play in the two diverse bilingual/multilingual learning environments. And in fact, depending on the framework selected, interpretations of the data may not be one-dimensional. Thus such studies are enlightening in that they are able to generate a better understanding of how learning is effected in different communities of learning.

Plenary Speaker

Wong Bee Eng is an associate professor in the Department of English at the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia. She obtained her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Essex. She teaches courses in linguistics and applied linguistics. Her main research interests are in the areas of syntactic, morphological and vocabulary development in SLA, discourse studies and second language assessment. She has published of papers (including journal articles) in these areas.

Recent articles

Wong, B. E. & Chan, S. H. (2008). The Acquisition of English Articles by Non-native Speakers. In Jurnal Bahasa Jendela Alam, Vol. 5, pp. 700-714.
Wong, B. E. & Chan, S. H. (2008). Contemporary Malaysian English: word innovation through morphological processes. In Graduate Times UPM, Vol. 4 (2), School of Graduate Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, pp. 3-9.
Wong, B. E. & Quek, S. T. (2007). Acquisition of the English Definite Article by Chinese and Malay ESL Learners. In Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching (e-FLT), Vol. 4, pp. 210-234.

Book Chapters

Wong, B.E. & Mallan, V. (in press ). Constructing Meaning in a Bilingual Learning Environment: Two Primary Classrooms in Malaysia. Take 1. In Barnard, R. and Torres-Guzman, M. E. (Eds.). Creating Classroom of Learning: International Case Studies and Perspectives. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Mallan, V. & Wong, B. E. (in press). Negotiating appropriateness in the second language within a dual language education classroom setting. Take 2. In Barnard, R. and Torres-Guzman, M. E. (Eds.). Creating Classroom of Learning: International Case Studies and Perspectives. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Wong, B. E. & Liu, J. C. (2008). The Acquisition of Gender, Number and Case in English Personal Pronouns. In Jacobson, R. (Ed.) The Pulse of a Malaysian University. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 101-119.

Constructing Knowledge in Bilingual/Multilingual Learning Environments

Interaction in a learning environment between the teacher and his/her students can vary from community to community. The interaction may be affected by the medium of instruction in the classroom and the culture practised by the community. In terms of the medium of instruction, the language used may be the learners’ or even the teacher’s second or third language. The culture that is practised by the community may affect the ideological practice(s) adopted in the classroom of the same community. Given complexities of this nature, case studies of such interactions can enrich us in terms of the interplay between the language used, the culture practiced, and thus the ideological practices adopted by each of the learning communities studied.

The paper presents accounts of interaction in two bilingual/multilingual learning environments. The first is that of a local situation and the second is located in the United States. The objective is to show how learning is mediated in face-to-face interactions in these bilingual/multilingual environments and what can be learnt from such an analysis. The data was collected in classrooms from two local schools and a school in the US. In the local context, classroom dialogues were recorded by the teacher when s(he) was teaching year 4 Science or Mathematics in a national or national type primary school. Each of the interactions of the US data was collected during a year-long study of Read Alouds in a fifth grade classroom. In both contexts, interactions were analyzed to better understand the expectations of the teacher and the learners on what it means to be a good learner. Strategies adopted by the teachers to bring about learning in the classrooms were also identified. The analyses of the teacher-student interactions reveal that different ideological practices seem to be at play in the two diverse bilingual/multilingual learning environments. And in fact, depending on the framework selected, interpretations of the data may not be one-dimensional. Thus such studies are enlightening in that they are able to generate a better understanding of how learning is effected in different communities of learning.