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.

Week Three Readings

For her article "The Making of an American...", Aneta Pavlenko analyzed several autobiographies by American immigrants from both the turn of the 20th century and from the modern era. Pavlenko compared the topics and rhetoric of these documents and examined them within their cultural context to determine in what ways, if any, the experiences of the two immigrant groups were similar or different. She also sought to determine what effect language acquisition had on the immigrants' cultural identity. The most interesting difference that Pavlenko discovered in her study was that having to do with language acquisition. It seemed, based on the autobiographies under study, that the turn-of-the-century immigrants had much quicker, easier, and less painful experiences with new language acquisition. Many of these immigrants seemed to learn English simply by studying dictionaries and the Bible, and most expressed confidence in their English skills within six months of their immigration. On the other hand, modern day immigrants describe a very stressful, lengthy, and excrutiating experience with English-acquisition. For many of them, according to Pavlenko, it took as much as several years to gain what they considered to be proficiency in the language.

The assumptions that Pavlenko makes as to the reasons for these differences are more interesting than the differences themselves. Pavlenko concluded that earlier immigrants had an easier time learning English for several reasons: many were already multi-lingual, so learning a new language was a familiar process; the types of jobs acquired by these immigrant often required limited English-speaking skills, so they assumed proficiency while really having a basic understanding of the language; laws at the time required the learning of English, so by learning English, they were only doing what was expected of them and what all of their compatriots were doing or had already done. Modern day immigrants have a more difficult time gaining English proficiency because the expectations for "proficiency" are higher, there is a general feeling of nationalism that leads many immigrants to resist formerly common forms of assimilation, and they feel that learning the new language will mean abandoning their own. It is this last assumption that I do not quite agree with, although I know this conclusion is based on what seems to be quite extensive research. I'm not sure I agree because the school at which I teach, while maintaining a generally homogeneous population, did experience for a few years a sporadic influx of Hispanic migrant workers. The experiences I've had with these families reflect more what Pavlenko described of the turn-of-the-century immigrants than the modern ones, particularly with regard to their lack of abandonment of their native language. These families almost uniformly had learned a basic level of English, as their jobs required, yet they maintained a use of both languages when speaking with friends and families. These families did not seem reluctant in the least to learn (more) English, but they also kept a strong hold on their first language.

This is already quite long, so I'll try to discuss the Holliday readings briefly. These readings were valuable particularly because of their function if defining terms that I was last week completely confused about, such as "thick description". I was happy to learn more about this concept. The anecdote about the Iranian woman's peers potentially creating a thick description of her culture was very useful, but I hope it's a made-up story, because the way her peers behaved seemed quite shocking and not any way I would expect most of my acquaintances to behave. At the same time, it made me wonder (if it is a true story) if perhaps the subject of the story was perceiving attitudes that weren't really there. That is the only way I could make sense of such an ignorant display.

As I read about it, I realized that creating a thick description of a culture would be a great way to gather information to educate students about various cultures, but the problem is that this process seems to require actually having experiences with the cultures under study, and those experiences are rarely available to me.

The most interesting part of these readings was the example of the Chinese student generalizing, and perhaps even exaggerating, his country's culture for some unknown culture-shock reason of his own. The suggestion that individuals describe their culture to "outsiders" not as it truly is but as they wish it to be seen is an interesting one. However, I also think that an individual's generalization about his own culture is no different from another's generalization about some other culture; in both cases, I think it's more often just a simplified way of explaining something rather than an intentional misrepresentation - for whatever reason. What would have made the anecdote even more valuable than it already was would be to have asked the Chinese student why he exaggerated his country's Confucianism, rather than just making an assumption.

Week Two Readings

          What struck me as I was reading the first article, “Cultural Globalization and Language Education,” was how directly fashion connected to much of what Kumaravedivelu was saying. The author seemed to want very much to assert a non-essentialist view of culture, particularly in saying that every culture is affected and changed by a variety of other cultures, and this intermingling has been taking place since the first civilizations. Perhaps because of the author’s earlier mention of fasion as a component of culture, I immediately connected this discussion of cultural mish-mash to the cross-cultural influences of clothing. For example, women in America are still wearing Romanesque sandals, toga-like dresses, tiered skirts that were first worn in Mesopotamia, and espadrilles, which were designed in ancient Persia (if I remember correctly). Those are just a few metaphoric examples of the significant impact that other cultures can have on one’s own. [And to be fair, I will mention that I recently saw a program on the BBC about certain Japanese fashions taking after the ancient Roman chiton, a type of female garment.] There were other ways in which I thought fashion complemented Kumaravedivelu’s point of view, such as the use of style by micro-cultures to self-identify, but I don’t want to belabor the point.

            The second article, “TESOL and Culture,” was not as enjoyable to read, largely because I found the review of literature at the beginning to be quite vague. For example, the author, Atkinson, mentioned the use of terms like identity by TESOL scholars to refer to culture in recent years,  but he doesn’t ever explain what this identity theory is. Another example is when Atkinson states that one author under review criticizes ESL teachers for causing their students to rhetorically construct their identities, but doesn’t define that concept for the reader. Perhaps more experienced TESOL students understand these references and terms better than I, but as a novice, it would have been helpful to me to get more information on these ideas. I also disliked the summary of Foucault’s argument that knowledge-power discourses render society inequitable, since lawyers have tremendous legal power and doctors have the same for medicine. Does Foucault suggest, then, that we should all have equal knowledge-power in these areas? Or is this just an over-simplification of his point? Further discussion of the discourse theory suggests that the latter might be the case, as in its broadening to the point that some people are brought up more advantageously than others, but again, as a novice, I can’t be sure.

            I did notice some similarities between the two articles. For example, they both agreed on the problem of Orientalism, a concept that was no surprise to me. They also both seem to come from non-essentialist points of view, as they go into great detail about the fluid nature of cultures and about the effects of “other” cultures. In the last article, I most liked the discussion of Strauss and Quinn’s theory that culture comes from an individual’s experiences. I definitely agree with this, because everyone we meet has a slightly different culture from our own, the substance of which has been influenced by their upbringing, their education, their friendships, etc. An individual’s culture might be more similar to that of one friend than another, but I believe that each individual’s culture is at least slightly different from any others’. I think the author of this article agrees, since he made Individuality the first principle of culture.

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