Voluntourism and Language Learning/Teaching: Critical Perspectives

✍ Scribed by Larissa Semiramis Schedel, Cori Jakubiak

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 401
• Series: Palgrave Advances in Language and Linguistics
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This edited volume extends current voluntourism theorizing by critically examining the intersections among various forms of work-leisure travel and language learning/teaching. The book’s contributors investigate volunteer tourism and its cognates such as working holidaymaking, international internships, and gap year labor, as discursive fields in which powerful ideas about language(s), their speakers, and pedagogical practices are propagated worldwide. The various authors’ chapters shed light on the hegemony of global English, the social consequences of linguistic commodification and neoliberal rationalities, the ways in which speaker identity positions can alter the exchange value of languages, and how language competencies are tied to power in the labor market, among related topics. This volume will be of interest to readers in Applied Linguistics, Critical Sociolinguistics, Educational and Linguistic Anthropology, Tourism and Leisure Studies, Migration and Mobility Studies, and Language Teaching and Learning. 

✦ Table of Contents

Praise for Voluntourism and Language Learning/Teaching
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
1: Introducing Language-Motivated Voluntourism
Setting the Stage
Volunteer Tourism: A Changing Field
From Segmented Volunteer Tourism to Language-Motivated Voluntourism
Language in Tourism
Critical Perspectives
Outline of the Book
References
Part I: Language-Motivated Voluntourism in Contexts of Leisure and Holiday Travel
2: Immersion as Language Ideology and Other Discourses in English-Language Voluntourism
Introduction
English as Development Within English-Language Voluntourism
Beyond Good or Bad: Studies of Volunteer Tourism in Specific Sectors
Methods
Findings
English for Modernist Development
English for Entrepreneurial Subjectivity
English for Addressing Inequality
Native English Immersion as Pedagogy
Discrepant Data
Discussion
Conclusion
References
3: Becoming “TEFL Certified”: Professionalization, Certification, and Commodification in Teaching English as a Foreign Language Volunteer Tourism
Introduction
Literature Review
“Doing Well” by (Purportedly) “Doing Good”
TEFL Certification
“Fast-Track” Teacher Certification
Becoming “TEFL Certified” Within the Context of Volunteer Tourism
Methodology
Findings and Discussion
Organization and Program Management Standards
Mission Statement
Program Length and Structure
Administration
Candidate Services
Curriculum and Instructor Standards
Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
Instructor
Candidate Standards
Language
Culture
Instruction and Assessment
Professionalism
Conclusion
References
4: Translating the Value of Global Languages: Learning/Teaching Spanish/English Within Volunteer Tourism in Cusco, Peru
Negotiating Linguistic Practice
Where Locals, Tourists, and Anthropologists Meet
Evolving Tourism Industries: Cusco from 1980s to 2010s
Working, Playing, and Learning with Tourists: Cusco’s Child Vendors
Methods: Accessing Foreigner and Local Points of View
Teaching and Learning Fluctuations, Linguistic Dreaming, and English as Enrichment
Coming and Going: Fluctuations in Volunteer Teacher and Child Learner
English as the Language of Mobility: Linguistic Dreaming of Cusco’s Child Vendors
Linguistic Power Struggles: Classes Versus Practice as Forms of Language Enrichment
Meaningful Work, Meaningful Learning
Volunteers as Experience Consumers: Entitlement to Meaningful Work
Child Vendors as Agentive Language Users: Desires for Meaningful Learning
Connection Through and In Spite of Linguistic Barriers
Multilingual Resources for Connection
Linguistic Cosmopolitanisms in Action: Global Languages and Their Values
References
5: The Off-Duty Expectations of International Volunteer Language Teachers: A Middling Transnational Perspective
Introduction
Middling Transnationals and Work-Leisure Configuration: An Emerging Practice of Combining Leisure, Labor, and Mobility
Volunteer Tourism and Working Tourism
Context of the Investigation: The Nikkei Volunteer Program
Methods
Analysis: Off-Duty Expectations as Part of Volunteers’ Decisions—Choosing a Destination, Choosing a Language
Keiko’s Case: An “Unserious” Reason for Choosing Her Destination
Yuko’s Case: “Spanish, if Possible” to Search for “Something Additional”
Tamaki’s Case: The Value of Portuguese in Her Own Employment Context in Japan
Discussion: Shedding Light on the Linguistic Aspect of Middling Transnationals’ Subjectivities
References
Part II: Language-Motivated Voluntourism as Precarious Labor
6: Dreaming of Entrepreneurship, Europe, English, and Freedom: Voluntourism as a Pure Survival Strategy
Language Tourist or Illegalized Migrant?
Voluntourism and Language Learning as Entrance to Labor Migration
Methods
Issam’s Dreams
Dreaming of Entrepreneurship, Europe, and English: Language Tourism in Malta
Desire for Freedom and Emancipation: Escaping or Being Trapped as a Voluntourist in Europe
Conclusion: Toward a More Comprehensive Understanding of (Inequalities in) Voluntourism
References
7: Institutionalized Volunteerism in Language Tourism: Volunteer Internship Programs for South Korean Young Adults Studying English in Toronto
Introduction
Infrastructure of Language Tourism as Migration
Global Experience in Neoliberal South Korean Society
The Study
The Intermediaries’ Marketing of Internships as Volunteerism
The Intermediaries’ Institutionalization of Volunteer Internships
The Students’ Demystification of Volunteer Internships
Discussion and Implications
References
8: Voluntelling the Voluntoured: State-Prompted South Korean English Language and Labor Mobility in Australia
Introduction
South Koreans and Global Travel
Methods
Australia and Racialized Spatial Segregation
The Australian Countryside
Experiences of “Value Beyond Value”
Paradoxical Inclusions
Conclusion
References
9: “Gaps,” Workers with No Schedule: The Making of Casual Workers in Two Northern Irish Boarding Schools
“The Job of a Boarding Is Not Just a Timetable”
Young Traveling Language Assistants as “Gaps”
Living with “Gaps”: Ethnographic Explorations of Two Boarding Schools in NI
The Changing Landscapes of Northern Irish Boarding Schools
“Because They’re Cheap Labor”: An International Workforce
“Contribute Your Skills Wholeheartedly”: Regulating the Days and Bodies of Language Assistants
The Gapification of Workers and the Moralities of Compliance
Regulating Time off: Shaping Imaginaries of Mobility Through Language Assistantship Contracts
Gap Years, Voluntourists, or Language Workers and Learners?
References
10: Afterword: The Wages of Global Experience, Post Unit Thinking, and Post Native Speaker Ideologies in Volunteer Tourism
The Wages of Global Experience
The Discourse of Globalization
The Discourse of Immersion
The Discourse of Volunteering as Receiving
Effects on the Discourses of Globalization, Immersion, and Volunteering as Receiving
Language Learning, Standardization, and Unit Thinking: Reinterpreting Ideologies of Native Speakers and Immersion
The Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program and Neo-Immersion
Comfortable Speakers (Formerly Known as Native Speakers)
Rethinking English-Language Voluntourism and Immersion
Wordplay
References
Index