Canagarajah Reading

The quote that really encompassed one of the views that this class has taught me was this: “We now recognize that (a) because English is nativized in many communities (featuring diverse norms), we cannot treat these speakers as less legitimate “nonnative” English speakers; (b) because identities are hybrid and multiple, and most of the world is multilingual, we must conceive of learners as having identities that often accommodate English seamlessly with other languages… Suffice it to say that we are now compelled to orient ourselves to our learners in more specific ways, taking into account their diverse learning contexts and needs.” This quote is important because it speaks of how we really can’t even presume that there’s one methodology that will cater to all of our students. Like our previous readings have told us, we might encounter students who’ve been taught English in their home country or students who’ve been barely exposed to English. It wouldn’t help the student who learned English in his home country if the teacher was to start at the basic—teaching him grammar without considering the different contexts that he might find himself in. We’ll have to incorporate the English he’s learned in his home country into the methodology we use. The same could be said to the student who has to start from scratch. And yes, that’s easier said than done and I can’t even presume to guess that I’ll have an answer to that, years from now—but Troike has said that, “there can be no one ‘best’ method is undoubtedly the wisest approach.” And I think that’s what my ESL teacher did when she was teaching me in middle school here in the US. The government in the Philippines require schools as early as kindergarten to teach English, so coming to middle school, I already possessed knowledge in English—you know, I had all the components, all the bits and pieces that would have made me into this walking, talking-English machine. What I lacked was the finishing touch, the interaction/discourse—something that you can’t really experience outside of the classroom in the Philippines—that would have assembled all the pieces together. My ESL teacher provided that, she mostly gave me a place where I could display what I already know without fear of embarrassment. But with her other two students, she was more concerned with instructing them with grammar, vocabulary etc.

Lingua Franca English

I don’t know how to articulate what’s currently inside my head but when I read this article, I was taken aback at how simply Canagarajah blurred the dichotomy between native speakers and non-native speakers when he questioned whether there’s really a separation between grammar and pragmatics (do you have to be proficient in a language’s grammar if you could still communicate your message in the context you’re in) or can’t NNS “shape language to suit their purposes” just as easily as any NS can? I really don’t know if there’s a barrier that prevents a NNS from being NS-like. If there is, where does that begin? As a NNS of English, I consider myself to be proficient enough. Sometimes I forget that I’m not a NS especially when I’ve immersed myself enough in English that I think in English, that I dream in English. To me, English no longer is just a language that I use when I communicate with others, it’s a language that I use when I’m debating with myself, when I’m trying to unravel new notions. There’s no longer a bridge between Tagalog or Ilocano and English—I don’t have think first in Ilocano before I talk in English. Does that make me as competent as a native speaker? Or a LFE speaker?

            One of the things I liked about this article was how wholly Canagarajah described LFE. He said “the speakers of LFE are not located in one geographical boundary. They inhabit and practice other languages and cultures in their own immediate localities…they recognize LFE as a shared resource…” To me, it just boggles the mind. English, the way I imagined it to be, was a monolithic language, impervious to any change or influence. But it’s not. That’s not really how languages go, do they? They evolve to reflect the needs of the communicator.

Chapter 5

In Branch 5-1, Wong talked about Vygotsky's ideas in TESOL and the minority. He said that all children, whether they are "normal" or children with disabilities or from a minority, have the same capabilities of learning and should have the opportunities to participate in the educational discourse. According to Wong, Vygotsky "understood education as a tool for social transformation--for social emancipation and freedom from want." I think it's easy for us to take the easy way out--to keep the status quo and not transform our methodology to include all students, thereby preventing access to knowledge for all students. But Vygotsky said that it shouldn't be the case, we need to use education so that it is accessible to all students, whether they have disabilities or are in the minority. If given access to education, all students can use education to transform their lifestyle. The previous quote just reminds me of that saying, give a man a fish and he'll have food for the day; teach him how to fish and he'll have food for a lifetime.

Later in Branch 5-2, I heartily agree with Wong when she said we should "honor home languages and cultures, we need to bring bilingual and bicultural models into our classrooms and we need to change the climate--the culture of our classrooms, to foster respect for all languages." This reminds me of Jim Cummin's framework of language minority students in the way that he said that we should take an additive view toward the home language and cultures. We shouldn't expect our students to only speak English in the classroom because we're just merely denying them their identity. Instead, we should work so that our curriculum reflects respect for all languages.

Annotated Bibliography

Davidson, Keith. "The Nature and Significance of English as a Global Language." English Today 23.01 (2007): 48-51. Print.

In this article, Davidson states that although the use of English threatens almost 90% of the world’s many languages, people are still definitely multilingual in the way that we choose to speak English as well as our “native” languages. Davidson also points out that although English is a global language, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a standardized English out there that is accessible to all speakers. He lists the main varieties of English as: British and Irish, American and Canadian, Australian and New Zealand, African, Caribbean, South Asian, and East Asian. With so many different varieties, Davidson acknowledges that there is a certain kind of “dysfunction in international English that can arise” especially when English speakers don’t understand other speaker’s use of English from different regions. This article is helpful because it adds a certain dimension to my paper. Countries who use English don’t just accept the kind of English being given to them by foreigners. They find ways in order to make English their own.

Bobda, Augustin Simo. "Linguistic Apartheid: English Language Policy in Africa." English Today 20.1 (1999): 19-26. Print.

Bobda states that there are differences between British English and Pidgin English in Africa and this created a “British linguistic apartheid.” For example, Bobda postulates that the native English speakers didn’t want Africans and Asians to attain native-like competence and proficiency. Bobda argued that this apartheid is encouraged through “falling standards” of teaching English in the school curricula (19). This means that there’s lesser funding for schools to teach the standard British English. He argues that because of this Pidgin Englishes are developed more and more—to the point in which it becomes incomprehensible as a means of inter-communication. This will be helpful to my article because it will show an impact in which “standard” English is not being taught and how negatively it might be viewed as by other people.

Song, Jae Jung. "The Juche Ideology: English in North Korea." English Today 18.01 (2002): 47-52. Print.

This article talks about how English is taught in North Korea—one of the most reclusive countries in the known world. It states that unlike other non-English speaking countries, North Korea uses English as a means of venerating Kim Il Sung and its other leaders. This will help my paper because it shows another aspect of how English is transformed in other countries.

Qian, Niu and Wolff, Martin. "The Chinglish Syndrome: Do recent developments endanger the language policy of China?." English Today 19.4 (2003): 30-35. Print.

According to Qiang and Wolff, there are six assumptions that accompany the ESL teaching methodology in China. The first assumption is that “everyone in China needs to learn ESL” (31). For example, Beijing wants all of its residents to learn and be able to speak English so that its representation as international city will be strengthened. The second assumption is that there is only one teaching method suitable for ESOL. Qiang argues that this is simply impossible with the sheer number of population of Chinese wanting to learn the language and that one methodology will not be suitable for everybody. The third assumption is that Chinese ESL speakers can teach English even if they don’t have any cultural background. Qiang also disagrees with this assumption because teachers may not go beyond teaching the grammatical rules of English will certainly not help the students learn how to communicate in different settings. The teachers may not be able to correct students on proper pronunciation. This article will be helpful because it gives a snippet on how countries are handling their language policy to reflect their need to teach English.

#7

One of the things that were discussed from Chapter 3 was how similar the ginkgo nut was to learning. Wong said that both could be displeasing and sometimes be irksome. When someone steps on the ginkgo nut, it will release an odor so foul that someone wouldn’t be able to stand. The same thing could be said of learning. It is understandable that learning can be considered as an acquired taste. There are so many things that can be unpleasing and discouraging to a student especially when he or she is just beginning to explore the realm of learning—it make take years and hard work before the student develop the “taste” for learning.

            Learning could be an acquired taste because there are so many things that blocks a student from finding pleasure on the act. For example, the material may be too hard for the student to comprehend. Instead of trying to work on the solutions to a problem that’s too hard for him or her, the student may choose to give up entirely. He or she might not have teachers who encourage their efforts and instead highlight their mistakes, as well as understate their efforts. This environment fosters a state in which the student may not be as agreeable to learning. However, Wong also describes something called “problem posing” in order to help the students learn a new language in ways that wouldn’t leave a bad taste/experience for all involved.

            According to Wong, “students learn the new language through dialogue and meaningful activity.” It is not enough for teachers to give students the rules of the grammar and memorize thousands of vocabulary then expecting these methods to be enough so that the student could learn a new language. A more substantial help is needed. For example, Vygotsky claimed, “An activity that is generative of higher mental processes is a socially meaningful mediated activity. The source of mediation is either in a material tool, in a system of symbols, or in the behavior of another human being.” When I was first learning English, one of the activities that my teacher gave us was encouraging the students to read one after the other. When we didn’t know how to pronounce a word, our other classmates could help us. Sometimes, groups would enact a passage that we read in class. This only helped us volunteer more often and made English into our own language.

#6

This chapter really made me realize how many aspects of TESOL there are to consider. For example, the size of classroom affects how teachers should approach their teaching methods. They need to make sure that not only are they covering the agenda promptly, they also need to make sure that they are connecting with their students and making sure that the students are all on the same page. However, students in a language-learning class might be more difficult to handle than any regular classes because are there not only different levels of knowledge among students, there are also different beliefs and assumptions that may be conflicting with Western values.

Going from my experiences, I'm really grateful for the school I went to during middle school. In the Philippines, learning English was just another class for me. There was a barrier between myself and the language. Speaking it didn't nearly matter as much as passing the class because all my other classmates felt that way. When I came here as a teenager, I became that girl who simply watched from the window. Most of the time, it was hard to connect with other students; there was always that doubt that I would be able to communicate what I wanted to say. But when I was in the ESL class, that barrier was gone. I was with a teacher who had a tremendous amount of patience, someone who encouraged me to find the right words. It also helped that she only had two other students along with me who occupied her attention. She was able to dedicate her time and made sure that all of us understood the language and the culture that came along with it. I know that if I was in a ESL class with twenty other students, I wouldn't have felt as comfortably as I did then.

#5

Reading the first chapter of "Dialogic Approaches to TESOL" really made me realize the discrepancies of education in not only the United States but in the Philippines as well. Reevaluating my academic experiences while in the Philippines, I can see how wide the gap existed between people with different economic backgrounds. Being in a private school, I didn't share the hardships that my cousin did--in his school, there was no ventilation, no computer technology, no books that weren't even second-hand, no library and aside from the various private stores ran by the villagers, there was no dining hall that the students could go to. I, on the other hand, had those luxuries and more. I received an education that's comparable to education here in the United States. However, there was one thing that my cousin received that I didn't and that was the opportunity to use my first language, Ilocano, in school. From kindergarten to grade school, the teachers had expected the students to know and speak Tagalog. In that school setting, Ilocano didn't share the same prestige that Tagalog did even though at least half of the students were speaking Ilocano outside of school. I never received any academic/formal education in Ilocano. Sure, English was taught alongside Tagalog but private schools never had any Ilocano-based curriculum. I guess that's one of the things that I related with in reading the chapter. It makes me feel as if Ilocano is somehow lesser than Tagalog. Aside from this, I also learned (or relearned) a few of the educational approaches that targeted students' needs more than the it did for the teachers or any general aspects.

The Grammar Translation Approach focused more learning the linguistic structures of the target language such as the syntax. The problem with this approach was the fact that it only forced the students to translate classic texts, learn grammar rules instead of actually learning the language. I know that just using this approach isn't really beneficial to the student but using this approach alongside another method would be. I think learning the grammar of a language is still helpful when you have no background of the target language. The Grammar Translation Approach could give students one of the necessary tools in order to be successful at learning the language. In any game, as well as in language, half the battle is knowing the rules: knowing where the subject goes, knowing the punctuation marks, knowing you can't just have random words without a verb etc. If the GTA was used alongside another approach like the Communicative Approach, the student will be better at acquiring the language.

#4

One of the topics that caught my eye was the Accommodation Theory which states that speakers "change their pronuciation and even the grammatical complexity of sentences they use to sound more like whomever they are talking to" (103). In my experience of learning Japanese, I could see how my professor seems to fit the description of a speaker who avoids complex grammar--for which I am so deeply grateful for--when she's talking about Japanese grammar in our class. One example of how she simplifies her grammar is through the use of "arimasu" and "imasu" when talking about existence verbs and the usage of "desu" as a topic marker. In almost all the anime (which I assume reflects the general pattern of speech among native speakers) I see, I've rarely heard any of the voice actor use the word "arimasu" or "imasu" in their script. However to help us understand, our professor uses "arimasu" so that the students would know that she's asking whether something exists/possible.

I'm grateful for the professor's simplification of her grammar because I know myself well enough to admit that I still have a working knowledge of Japanese. I still need all the crutches that she's willing to give (whether she uses simple sentences, uses more obvious adjectives, slow rate of speech) so that I may better understand what she's trying to say. Yet, I also know that if I were to go to Japan with the knowledge of Japanese that's comparable to a native speaker and still be talked to as if I was a non-native speaker, I'd be very well offended. The only way any sort of accommodation or foreigner talk is helpful is when it truly reflects the knowledge of the listener. It becomes less so when the accommodation makes the listener believe that s/he is being looked down upon or treated with condescendion.

#3

WILD CHILD
#5: I think Victor's case supports the Critical Period Hypothesis because it supports the idea that "children have only a limited number of years during which normal acquisition is possible" (Saville 82). Although Victor was able to understand the form of words based on his ability to correctly match household items with their corresponding representations, I don't think he would have had the ability to use those words to project different meanings or be able to use them in any syntactic context. However, although he wasn't able to acquire a spoken language, he was able to communicate to other people using gestures--gestures that he had to learn in the new context he found himself in.



One of the models that Chapter Four tackles in trying to explain how languages are acquired is the Competition Model. Researched by Brian MacWhinney (1945), the Competition Model assumes that "all linguistic performance involves 'mapping' between external form and internal function" (Saville 78). In short, we view words as items that have both form and function. The form of a word is represented by the sounds we make in trying to pronounce the word while the function involves the meaning of the word.
This model further stipulates that L1 learning requires an understanding of this form-function mapping. However, once you've internalized this mapping system, you can then be able to modify it to suit your target language.

I found this interesting because I realized that this is what I've mostly been doing in trying to learn Japanese. I'm using my knowledge of English (how it is grammatically, semantically) in hope of understanding the grammar of Japanese. Just like Saville states, one of the similarities that both Japanese and English have is their reliance on inflections in conveying a meaning. In knowing this, I could just easily modify my mapping system of English to cater to my Japanese. I've also found interesting is the fact that I'm now using my knowledge in L2 in order to acquire another language instead of my L1.

#2

One of the things that truly caught my eye while reading Chapter Three was Chomsky's argument that "the acquisition of vocabulary has become much more important...because lexical items are thought to include rich spefication of properties that are needed for parameter setting and other features of grammar, as well as for interpretation of semantic meaning" (Saville-Troike 49). I believe in his argument because learning vocabulary in Japanese not only helps me learn the Japanese equivalent for English words, it also helps me understand the intricacies of Japanese grammar as well. For example, knowing the word "ikimasu" not only means knowing it is a verb "go," it also means that it only accepts the post-particle "e" because it is a motion verb (e.g. "shokudou e ikimasu" ~go to the cafeteria). Another example is knowing the vocabulary of adjectives. For example, I know that adjectives that end in -i are adjectives that describe inanimate things while adjectives that end in -na are adjectives that describe animate things.

In reading How Languages are Learned, one of the concepts that I've come across was Krashen's affective filter hypothesis. He used the term, affective filter, as the "metaphorical barrier that prevents learners from acquiring language even when appropriate input is available" (Spada 37). This has some validity towards my learning Japanese because I find myself understanding the concept learned in class better when I'm at home compared to when I'm actually in class. Sometimes, the professor would expect the students to know the difference between the "ni" particle and the "ga" particle in .25 seconds. That feeling of being rushed would just prevent me from learning and I'd just draw out that proverbial whaaa?? The difference would then occur to me after I've reviewed my notes at home without the pressure of knowing the answer right away.

#1

Chapter 1 mainly talks about the three different questions that needed to be answered in the process of SLA (the what, the why and the how) and it points out that one cannot fully understand SLA by using only one perspective. One cannot understand the process of SLA by just using the linguistic approach or the social approach. One has to take into account different perspectives. You have to consider what is being learned, why someone is learning the language, what social or political aspects should be gained etc.

In Chapter 2, it was said that, “bilingualism is present in practically every country…in fact it is difficult to find a society that is genuinely monolingual…” (8). As someone born in the Philippines, I can attest that this is the case. When I was studying there, I had to learn both Tagalog and English for my classes. Not only did we have a grammar class for Tagalog, the school also had an English grammar class. Moreover, celebrities and government leaders also spoke in English (or at least tried to) either to be considered as educated, exotic etc. Aside from English and Tagalog, there are many other languages being spoken in Philippines. One of them was Ilocano—a language in which I didn’t receive any formal learning.

While reading this chapter, I also learned some of the reasons why linguistic information isn’t gathered. Some of the reasons listed intrigued me such as the fact that a government might not gather any linguistic information to downplay the importance of a group and to present a more homogenous front. It saddens me that some people think that the only way to be more united is to ignore the differences from a society rather than in accepting these differences.

Aside from learning why linguistic information may not be collected as much, the chapter also talked about the many capabilities that children had in terms of learning a language. The fact that 6-month-children can already distinguish phonemes from different languages and be able to discard the phonemes that aren’t useful to them is just astonishing to me. Another fact that was interesting was that children already know what is “grammatically correct” even if they aren’t taught how the syntax should be in the first place.

One of the early theories presented in the third reading was the behaviorist theory. According to behaviorism, language acquisition was merely “the acquisition of a new behavior” (19). In this theory, there was no thinking involved when people learned a language. This acquisition was a result of people associating events and from reinforcement or punishment. For example, a person could learn an L2 by imitating others. If s/he learned how to imitate the language, s/he could receive rewards and vise versa. From this cycle of reinforcement/punishment, the individual would be able to learn the language.