4/10 Readings

            In the article “Language Ideologies and Politics…” authors Farr and Song discuss the ideology of monolingualism in many countries such as the United States. A long-lasting bias towards Standard English has created an environment of hostility and ignorance towards speakers of other languages. An interesting point the authors make, though, is that “In the US, what is considered Standard varies regionally, and what distinguishes any particular language as ‘Standard’ is actually the absence of stigmatized linguistic forms, not the presence of particular forms” (653). While I don’t completely agree with the first part of this statement – there is, in fact, a standard Standard, that national television newscasters speak, for example – I really like the point they make with the rest of their statement. When I think of what constitutes “Standard English” I do, indeed, think of the lack of grammar errors that would be found in non-Standard English. I can’t actually think of a way of describing Standard English that doesn’t include a “lack or absence of” something.

            Later, Farr and Song describe the acquisition of Standard English in the US as a sort of cultural capital: “… the abstract notion of Standard English becomes objectified as something people can possess or lack: it is an asset that can be acquired … those who do not acquire this commodity are viewed as choosing not to” (653). This reminded me of the cartoon we saw in class last week that illustrates the frustration of individuals who want the cultural capital of knowing Standard English, but are facing a number of obstacles in doing so.

            The article also discusses the effects of language policy on education. An interesting point made in this section was the assertion by Cangarajah in 2005 that “Some scholars have noted the danger of over-emphasizing the hegemonic power of language policy, which underestimates the agency of local educators in interpreting and applying such policy” (655). The authors go on, however, to illustrate the frustrations of teachers who favor multilingual education but are prevented from meeting their students’ needs because of the power of policies such as NCLB and state standards. It seems from these examples that the power of policy can not be exaggerated. A teacher may very well create a community of multilingualism in his or her classroom, but that lasts for only one year for those students, and the teacher may fail to meet the expectations of his or her administrator or state in the process. It is a tough situation for culturally-aware teachers to be in.

            The Language Planning and Policy chapter in McKay and Bokhorst-Heng discusses similar issues. One interesting discussion included in this chapter is that focusing on the lack of an official language policy in the United States. There have always been groups pushing for the designation of English as the official language of the US; in fact, many individual states have declared English as their official language, and groups like US English have been working very hard to sway public opinion enough to secure this declaration at the national level.

            Some scholars, it appears, argue that this lack of official policy has actually made language bias worse in our country. For example, Shannon (1999) concluded that the absence of a policy has caused US society to shift to an ideology of monolingualism and has established “English as a symbol of national identity, pride, unity …” (100). This leads me to wonder: in what way does having a multi-lingual policy prevent such bias? For example, as reviewed in last week’s readings, South Africa has numerous official languages, but there is still a heavy bias towards English, and even Afrikaans, although there are many other native languages that have been designated. It would seem that taking a multi-lingual approach doesn’t solve the problem. And what kind of policy would be effective for the US in correcting this fierce pro-English ideology? Even declaring some kind of multi-lingual policy in the US would exclude the languages of many of our citizens.

4/3 Readings

            In Chapter One of International English in Its Sociolinguistic Contexts, McKay and Bokhorst-Heng introduce the principle argument of their book: while it is valuable to have an international language like English, the spread of it should be effected in such a way that it supports the development of other languages. The authors then give Scholte’s five definitions for globalization and identify the fifth as the one they have in mind. This definition is “globalization as deterritorialization – the change of social space so that space is no longer mapped in terms of territorial places, distances, or borders. McKay and Bokhorst-Heng also want to focus on the need to balance local and global concerns in globalization.

            Later, the authors summarize Pennycook’s description of the two basic attitudes scholars have of the spread of English. The homogeny position sees the spread of English as homogenizing world culture, and this is perceived by some as positive, by others, negative. The heterogeny position states that English has been localized, creating different varieties of English in different parts of the world. This is all very interesting, but I didn’t see any of it applying to what was discussed in chapters two or three. Maybe later. Anyway…

            Chapter One also discusses the role of colonialism in the spread of English, remarking on the Linguistic Imperialism of British and American colonialism in particular. The authors also summarize here the book The Alchemy of English, which comments on the power of English to open “linguistic gates to international business, technology, science, and travel” (7). They also mention a study that concluded that in general, youths around the word believe that English is the key to success, and they summarize the incentives for learning English. The economic incentives include the use of English in transnational corporations and the prevalence of out-sourcing. Education incentives include policies within educational institutions to offer classes in English and governmental policies. There are also mass media incentives: in advertising, products are promoted in English, and English is the dominant language in popular music and movies. All of this information more directly related to the ideas discussed in the chapters immediately following.

            In Chapter Two, McKay and Bokhorst-Heng describe the various contexts in which English is now being learned. They start by summarizing Kachru’s 1985 model of concentric circles. The

Inner Circle

refers to countries in which English is the primary language. The

Outer Circle

refers to countries in which English serves as a recognized second language. The

Expanding Circle

describes countries in which English is widely studied as a foreign language, though it may not be used widely in the country itself. (29)

            The authors go on to break down the English learning contexts into how they differ in each of the above-named circles. In the Inner circle, countries like the United States have a tendency to pull out ESL students from their general education classrooms, and this presents a serious danger to their social development. In addition, many teachers view their ESL students negatively, even as cognitively deficient.

I have to say here that even though I know this concept is based on research, I find it hard to believe, because of the experiences I have had. I have worked with many teachers, both gen. ed. and ESL, in many schools in many areas of Illinois, at a variety of grade and English-proficiency levels, and I have never seen any behavior or heard any comment that could be perceived as evaluating the student on anything less than their actual abilities. In fact, I have often heard such teachers remark on how smart their students are, not in a surprised way, as if ESL students shouldn’t be smart, but in a proud way, as all teachers are when they see their students understanding something. Again, I’m sure the statements made by these and so many other authors are based on research and evidence, but I’m saying that I haven’t personally seen evidence of this, and it makes me feel like teachers aren’t given enough credit, not only for their hard work, but for the enormous amount of understanding and personal interest they show for each student.

In their discussion of the learning contexts of the

Outer Circle

, the authors focused on South Africa as an example. In S.A., English is recognized as an official language, but among many others. However, many schools still use English exclusively, even though that is not the first language of many of their students. South African principals and teachers view English as prestigious and a vehicle for economic advancement, and view alternate languages as the opposite. Still, in some

Outer Circle

countries, there is widespread bilingual education, such as the Philippines, where English is used to teach Math and Science, and Pilipino is used to teach everything else.

In Expanding Countries, many students have no motivation to learn English, as there is no immediate application of it for them in their communities. This reminds me of high school, where I was required to take Spanish, as it was the only foreign language offered, but I was living in a very homogeneous, Caucasian community in which there was no opportunity for the use of the language I was learning. Although I didn’t see myself going into a career in the future in with a knowledge of Spanish would be particularly valuable, I felt plenty motivated to learn it, because I am fascinated by languages and thought it was fun. But I can see how many of my peers were not motivated at all, and it showed! So, in these Expanding Countries, students are often required to learn English, but they don’t really see the reason for it. This has been called TENAR, Teaching English for No Apparent Reason, as well as some other funny names.

Yikes! This is already ridiculously long! The second chapter also talks about Communicative Language Teaching, which is quite interesting. The third chapter focuses on disglossia, which is multilingualism in which one language, or form of a language, is use for formal situations, while another is used for informal situations, such as SSE (Singapore Standard English) and SCE (Singapore Colloquial English). The chapter also talked about India, in which members of the professional elite account for most of the five percent who speak English, further stratifying the elite from the underprivileged. It also summarizes the ways in which access to English is limited for lower-caste students who make it to college (a very small percentage). There is also an interesting section on Mother Tongue Maintenance, but I’m not going to go into it, because this is twice as long as it’s supposed to be.

Week Eight Readings

            Cosette Taylor-Mendez summarizes in “Constructions of Racial Stereotypes in ESL Textbooks” a small study that she conducted in Brazil of the impressions textbook images make on the students who study them. Her study investigated the ways in which images were being used in EFL, whose interests were being served by those images, and whether we ought to seek change in such cultural portrayals. Her study, unsurprisingly, found that EFL students perceived a distinct white-dominant culture in the textbooks they were studying. Images of whites in the books presented them as business professionals, successful, wealthy, etc. Images of other races showed them in inferior roles or life situations. Overall, the students in the study thought the books “represented the books as a peaceful land of the social and political elite who are free from problems” (72). Interestingly, all students in the study had visited the US at least once, so they new and could remark on the fact that the images in their books were not showing the US as it really is. One student even commented that the images didn’t “teach about life styles, but about movie-styles” (p 72).

            A great part of the article was at the very end, where Taylor-Mendez offered some practical solutions to the problems highlighted by her study. While acknowledging that most teachers do not have a choice of what textbook they use, she did encourage EFL teachers to take measures to ensure their students recognize the discrepancy between the images in their books and reality. Some suggestions were: conduct thoughtful discussions about the ideas portrayed by the images, engage students in projects that ask them to redesign the images to be more appropriate and realistic, and possibly even have students write letters to the editors of their texts asking them to select more effective images. I love when authors provide practical advice and suggestions.

            The readings in Holliday et. al. provided a great amount of information on a variety of topics. Section A3.2 summarized and provided examples of Otherizing images of different cultures that are presented in the news and other media. Much later in the book, in Secion B3.3, a fascinating article by van Dejh provides more insight on this issue. The author begins by explaining the concept of New Racism, which is a subtler, more politically correct form of racism than the Old Racism of slavery and segregation. Yet, New Racism can in many cases be even more dangerous, especially because it is “respectable” and so widespread. New Racism involves the suggestion that although minorities may not be “inferior”, they are at least “different”: they have a different culture and “deficiencies” such as lack of achievement values and a dependence on welfare.

            The most interesting part of this article was the discussion of the ever-so-subtle ways in which the news media can sort of put minorities in their place while not really appearing to do so. For example, most news stories that involve minorities feature them in negative situations, and news staff will make purposeful lexical choices depending on the race/ethnicity of the subject (e.g. “riot” vs. “urban unrest” or “terrorist” vs. “freedom fighter”). This author also provided the clever use of syntax choices: minorities are often in the passive role in sentences (i.e. the direct or indirect object) unless they are the agents of negative actions, in which case they are the subject of the sentence. This was fascinating data that I had never considered before but immediately realized as true. This type of subliminal messaging has the potential to be eerily effective to even the most open-minded of observers. I wonder how much of these linguistic strategies are done with intent, and how much of it happens more as an unconscious reflex. I was a journalism major in college for three years, and we were (of course) never told to use these strategies, so where do they come from? Do they just grow out of the inherent racism of the writer?

Week Seven Readings

Will Baker asserted in “The Cultures of English as Lingua Franca” that ELF doesn’t have a particular and distinctive culture all its own. Rather, the culture of ELF is constant flowing and changing from conversation to conversation. This cultural variance is caused not only by the different cultural backgrounds of the speakers, but also by the variety of discourses of the speakers and the qualities that the speakers choose to perform for their audience. In fact, these last points apply not only to ELF conversations, but all communication in any language. This is why cited researchers Scollon and Scollon refer to interpersonal interactions as “interdiscourse communication” rather than “intercultural communication.”  

Baker analyzed many ELF conversations and concluded the above, and applied this knowledge to propose the pedagogical insight that ELF participant must be prepared to engage in communication through exercises in cultural awareness, language awareness, and accommodation skills. These are interesting findings, and the teaching points seem like meaningful goals, but I often wish that the authors of such articles would offer specific examples or ideas of how their suggestions might be applied in the classroom. For example, teaching “cultural awareness” is a broad and ill-defined goal for teaching, and many instructor, such as myself, would have a difficult time of implementing such a program of learning. It’s difficult to visualize what a course teaching “accommodation skills” would look like when it is so different from anything one has seen before.

The article “Recording and Analysing Talk” by Meredith Marra was extremely interesting and enlightening as to the lengths to which some researchers will go to get the best, most accurate data possible. These New Zealanders sought to analyze the nuances of Maroi communication in the workplace. To do so, they painstakingly trained themselves to understand and enact some of the most important qualities of the Maori culture. The researchers realized that they had to behave in ways that would make their Maori subjects comfortable, rather than themselves, if they were to gain authentic and complete data. They also included the Maori in the data interpretation phase of their study, to ensure that they were making accurate conclusions rather than making presumption based on misunderstandings.

Chapter 6 in International Englishes…provided background information and methodology for conversation analysis. It also provided some interesting elements to include in a successful English as an International Language pedagogy, such as teaching repair strategies like asking for clarification, rephrasing, or allowing wait time; and teaching basic conversation skills of expressing disagreement, turn-taking, and taking leave.

The most interesting part of the article was the discussion of the most common grammatical and phonological errors that ESL speakers make. The chapter provided a list of all of the common errors that do not impede communication. According to the chapter, many TOEFLs and experts think that English instructors should focus only on the errors that DO impede communication, rather than burdening their students with all possible errors, thus overwhelming them. This immediately sounded problematic to me, as I believe a complete education is the only education. I also know that if I was taught another language and later found out that I was making errors no one had told me about, I would not be happy at all. As I continued the chapter, I realized that others agree with my concerns. In fact, many students want to attain a native-like grammatical proficiency, so it is, indeed, inappropriate not to teach it completely. This did lead me to wonder, though, how many English instructors are, in fact, ignoring those common errors that don’t affect communication, and how many Spanish errors did I make in my Spanish courses that my professors never told me about!?

Week Six Readings

            Two of this week’s articles, “Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses” and “Unfinished Knowledge,” review similar concepts to those discussed in last week’s class. The stereotypes applied to Japanese ESL students that are summarized in these texts are very similar to those of the Chinese and Indian stereotypes; indeed, they are all part of one larger “Asian” stereotype.

            According to Kubota, many characterize the Japanese culture as homogeneous and group-oriented and they further state that these characteristics stifle the creativity of Japanese students. Some experts apply these issues to contemporary writing pedagogy, which dictates that collaboration ought to be a key element of the writing classroom. Kuboto cites Carson and Nelson as saying that Japanese students may not perform well in collaborative writing groups, because they would be focusing on harmonizing and achieving a group goal rather than giving constructive criticism to their peers and striving to achieve individual success.

            Other voices in the field problemetize the perceived deficiency of Japanese students in the art of critical thinking. For example, Ramanathan and Kaplan suggested that Japanese students don’t have the critical thinking skills and cultural background to comprehend and achieve audience and voice, other significant aspects of current writing pedagogy, considerations in composition classroom.

            Kubota goes on to explain that even Japanese ESL students themselves serve to perpetuate the misunderstandings that these stereotypes create. For example, Kubota cites Fox and her own Japanese students describing the Japanese writing style to be characterized by indirectness, vagueness, and politeness. These self-described features are reminiscent of the Kaplan doodles for Asian writing.

            The “Unfinished Knowledge” article presents an interesting fictional narrative of one writing teacher’s experiences with first embracing and perpetuating cultural stereotypes in her writing classroom without even realizing it, then realizing what she had been doing was wrong, and investigating ways to correct it. The best line in the entire story was when Barbara, the subject of the story, was at the height of her stereotyping methods: “Sometimes, she felt confident enough to point out cultural characteristics of a given country when a student from that country failed to notice them” (p 14). Hilarious.

            The Connor article was a little confusing, as it seemed to affirm some of the Kaplan-esque conclusions about distinctions between the writing styles of various essential cultures. Throughout the article, she cited specific differences between the writing styles and content of professional individuals from Finland, Senegal, America, and Belgium. As far as I could see, though, particularly in the examples of cover letters for a job application, the differences noted were no more significant than one might expect to see when comparing samples from two Americans from the same cultural background. Nobody writes in exactly the same way, and nobody follows the exact same prescription for what ought to be included in a given format or mode of writing.

            Overall, I didn’t find the articles to be particularly interesting this week, as they seemed to mostly support and summarize conversations we have already had. I did notice, though, that some of the characteristics of traditional Japanese educations practices that have been criticized as so very different from those in America are not only the exact same as teaching practices in this country from as recently as the 1970s or 80s, but that some of the practices mentioned are having a resurgence in contemporary classrooms. For example, Duke observed that Japanese classes in 1986 focused a lot on choral responses, and I recently learned at an RtI teaching workshop that choral response is an extremely valuable tool, if used properly, for ensuring engagement in the classroom.

Week Five Readings

            The most interesting article assigned for this week was “Cultural Assimilation and Its Delusions.” I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the emphasis put on Christianity as the religion that was any immigrants’ ticket into American culture. It shocked me that even modern-day Harvard scholars were encouraging immigrants to eschew their own religion and replace it with the “religion of America” – Protestantism. This really disgusts me, for are we not supposed to enjoy freedom of religion? This idea of America being a Christian country founded on Christian ideals is not a new one, and it is commonly expounded by certain politicians more frequently than my stomach can handle, but to try to force it on immigrants as if their entire belief system and way of conceiving of the world is inferior is even more reprehensible.

            “Problemetizing Cultural Stereotypes” was also interesting, particularly when it pointed out the fact that even American students exhibit some of these common Asian stereotypes in the classroom. This is so obvious that I can’t believe it has to be stated. Yet, I must admit that I was surprised to read that the author experienced unruly students in India, as I too had fallen under the general assumption that Indian children were earnest learners. To be fair to myself, this impression came from the real-life knowledge that all of the Indian students I had as a tutor at Sylvan were not there to catch up to their peers, but to get even farther ahead of their peers than they already were!

Week Four Readings

            This week’s articles and selections from the text book all focused on similar themes, but it wasn’t until I read the last section in Holliday that I really began to connect the dots. The brief summary of Shumann’s theories on social and psychological distance from the 1970s really tied everything together for me. The concepts that really struck me in these readings were the affects of social cues and what Shumann calls social solidarity.

            Something I had never considered before is the extreme difficulties of an immigrant dealing with culture shock, or - more specifically - changes in social cues. Not only do recent arrivals need to learn the vocabulary, grammar, and complicated idioms of the second language, they also have to learn what is different about their new home’s social cues. These cues can have a tremendous impact on the success of a conversation with a member of the “target language” group, as in the example of the college student requesting a letter of recommendation from an advisor.  To this, Peirce adds in her “Social Identity, Investment, and Language Learning” the added layer of difficulty of not only understanding the social cues of the target language, but also understanding its “rules of use” and how those rules support the dominant group in the new society.

            When a teacher of language learners takes all of this into account, the task of effectively preparing one’s students for successful communication seems unreasonably daunting. Peirce included in her article some excellent examples of teaching strategies to use in their classrooms to assist students with these problems, such as investigating opportunities to interact with native speakers, reflecting on interactions with target language speakers, and recording in a diary events that are surprising or unusual to ask about later. Although I do not teach non-native speakers, I did realize that these strategies could very easily be applied to other general education settings, as well. For example, I have a student who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s. This child has just as much, if not more, difficulty in interpreting social cues and understanding the “rules of use” in his culture. The recommending teaching strategies for language learners could be used to help him learn to understand and get along with his peers.

            Back to the effects of Shumann’s theories on my understanding of these concepts, I was also intrigued by his theory of social distance and the effect that social solidarity has on it. It’s interesting to think about how mutual the language acquisition process has to be: the newcomers and natives have to be almost equally willing for learning to take place in order for it to be successful. The former group has to be receptive to learning and using the target language while the latter group has be to receptive to teaching and understanding their new neighbors. What strikes me most about this is how much it also applies to general education. Not only do students need to be curious and eager to learn; their teachers need to also be willing to understand each student and his or her unique needs and abilities. In so many ways, ESL education is very closely related to general education.

            I have not yet mentioned the second article for this week, “Language and Identity.” The most interesting part of this text was a statement made by Richard Bauman: “Individual identity is the outcome of a rhetorical and interpretive process in which interactants make situationally motivated selections from socially constituted repertoires of identificational and affiliational resources and craft these semiotic resources into identity claims for presentation to others.” (p 35) What I like about this statement is that it concisely explains a very complicated process. And I hope I am interpreting the “situationally” part correctly, but it really gets to the heart of what I think of my identity: I really feel that, perhaps more so than others, strategically choose from a variety of personal identities depending on the situation. In fact, everyone does this to a certain extent, particularly teachers, and I like to see it included in an identity theory that does not specify that the selections must be made due to culture shock, as was suggested in one of last week’s articles.