Wikipedia contributors estimate that out of the 914 million English speakers in the world, a good 583 Million are speakers of English as an additional language. This implies that the world looks up to a great number of ESL/EFL teachers in the teaching of English as a Second/Foreign Language as compared to their counter parts – native speakers.
It is the quite disturbing to note that websites like Dave’s ESL Café, – “The Internet’s Meeting place for ESL + EFL teachers + students from around the World!”, would post job advertisements that require native speakers of English. If this website, for example, was indeed a true reflection of what the ESL/EFL field currently looks like, there wouldn’t be space for advertisements that promote the idea of Native speakers as “better” teachers of English. Canagarajah (1999) points out that being a native speaker of a language does not mean that you can be a good teacher of that language. She points out that:
“Language teaching is an art, a science, and a skill that requires complex pedagogical preparation and practice.” p. 80.
Thus suggesting that it’s not everyone who speaks a particular language can teach that language. This raises questions on Mr. Sperling standing as a promoter of ESL/EFL and someone who is involved in this field. In an interview Mr. Sperling mentioned the importance of being at least bilingual when you are an ELT especially an ESL/EFL teacher. From the job advertisements (that require Native Speakers of English only) that he posts on his website one can deduce that he cares less about the status quo of the TESOL field and cares more about the money that he gets out of advertising these jobs. Instead of marginalizing the vast number of NNEST in the TESOL field, he should be promoting the idea of an allied working relationship between NEST and NNEST. This will promote better teaching and learning of English since NNEST have advantages as English teachers (Medgyes, 1992). “Only non-NESTs can serve as imitable models of the successful learner of English” p.346.
It then goes without saying that as an ESOL teacher, one finds it disturbing that most ESL/EFL jobs “require” native speakers of English. In a fight to raise awareness of the important role played by NNEST in ESL/EFL and/or TESOL fields, popular media i.e. Dave’s ESL Café should take the initiative and support both NEST and NNEST. Hopefully we could bridge the gap and not view one group as superior to the other (Cook, 1999).
Monday, December 7, 2009
Sexual Identities in ESL presentation
Sexual Identities in ESL: Queer Theory and Classroom Inquiry
Cynthia Nelson, University of Technology, Sydney
Sexual Identities in ESL
Openness without fear of incrimination (homophobia and heterosexism)
Gay-friendly pedagogies have drawn on a lesbian and gay identity framework, which aims to legitimate subordinate sexual identities.
Thus proposing the queer theory to explain the importance of gay-friendly teaching practices and how to achieve those, i.e. problematising all sexual identities
Sexual Identities (SI) in Queer Theory
1960 and 1970 gay and lesbian movement was formed to raise awareness of gay/lesbian societies and fight for laws for non-discrimination
Post-structuralism = SI’s as acts not facts and not attributes but positionings.
1980/1990 queer was formed as a result of the challenges to SI politics
Queer serves to protest, or blur, clear-cut notions of SI
It is also used as a shorthand for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT)
SI as acts and not facts
Suggests that people are what they do and not what they are
Culturally Significant
Queer theory considers both homo/heterosexual whenever it talks of SI’s (universalizing view).
The straight/gay defining binary constitutes a category of knowledge as significant as masculine/feminine with a certain discourse and cultural practice.
Necessary but Problematic
Lesbian and Gay Approach
Appreciate and/or tolerating SI diversity
Challenges homophobia and heterosexism on the grounds of Human rights violation
Peripheral to cultural practices and discourse
Queer Theory Approach
Problematising the notion of SI
Looks at how discursive acts and cultural practices make heterosexuality seem normal (natural) - heteronormativity
Central to cultural practices and discourse
Using Queer Theory For Classroom Inquiry
Queer theory suggests that we should go beyond inclusion to inquiry
The problem with inclusion is how to represent “gays” and “lesbians” in the material.
Meaning that the parties concerned should be able to identify with the “character” in the material.
Inclusion – legitimation means one has to either be tolerant or tolerated
Emphasis on incl. minorities can therefore serve to reinforce their their minority status.
Queer theory – more flexible, open-ended framework for facilitating inquiry.
- provides a range of SI’s to be referred to or discussed throughout the curricula.
Considering more than one cultural context helps specify what it means to be identified as straight, gay or lesbian.
Observing an ESL Class
Choices and challenges teachers face when when facilitating classroom inquiry on SI.
A teacher wonders if s/he would be viewed as a homosexual and if that would affect the dynamics and attitudes of the class towards her/him and the learning area.
Activities should allow learners to speculate rather than debate issues of SI to avoid homophobia and/or heterosexism.
Choosing the “Right” Task
Teacher concerns incl. being unsure if students are interested or familiar with the topic.
Tasks should be accessible and potentially relevant to any student regardless of their SI
It should present different possibilities of interpretation of the SI in the task
Teachers must make sure that these tasks do not further marginalize the marginalized.
Discussion and Conclusion
SI are culturally readable acts or positionings that are inevitable and part of day-to-day interactions.
Teachers should keep in mind that even when SI are not being discussed, they are being read, produced and regulated during social interactions.
In ESL, learners, teachers, teacher educators and material developers should include identities with the intention of facilitating inquiry and not for the sake of inclusion.
Cynthia Nelson, University of Technology, Sydney
Sexual Identities in ESL
Openness without fear of incrimination (homophobia and heterosexism)
Gay-friendly pedagogies have drawn on a lesbian and gay identity framework, which aims to legitimate subordinate sexual identities.
Thus proposing the queer theory to explain the importance of gay-friendly teaching practices and how to achieve those, i.e. problematising all sexual identities
Sexual Identities (SI) in Queer Theory
1960 and 1970 gay and lesbian movement was formed to raise awareness of gay/lesbian societies and fight for laws for non-discrimination
Post-structuralism = SI’s as acts not facts and not attributes but positionings.
1980/1990 queer was formed as a result of the challenges to SI politics
Queer serves to protest, or blur, clear-cut notions of SI
It is also used as a shorthand for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT)
SI as acts and not facts
Suggests that people are what they do and not what they are
Culturally Significant
Queer theory considers both homo/heterosexual whenever it talks of SI’s (universalizing view).
The straight/gay defining binary constitutes a category of knowledge as significant as masculine/feminine with a certain discourse and cultural practice.
Necessary but Problematic
Lesbian and Gay Approach
Appreciate and/or tolerating SI diversity
Challenges homophobia and heterosexism on the grounds of Human rights violation
Peripheral to cultural practices and discourse
Queer Theory Approach
Problematising the notion of SI
Looks at how discursive acts and cultural practices make heterosexuality seem normal (natural) - heteronormativity
Central to cultural practices and discourse
Using Queer Theory For Classroom Inquiry
Queer theory suggests that we should go beyond inclusion to inquiry
The problem with inclusion is how to represent “gays” and “lesbians” in the material.
Meaning that the parties concerned should be able to identify with the “character” in the material.
Inclusion – legitimation means one has to either be tolerant or tolerated
Emphasis on incl. minorities can therefore serve to reinforce their their minority status.
Queer theory – more flexible, open-ended framework for facilitating inquiry.
- provides a range of SI’s to be referred to or discussed throughout the curricula.
Considering more than one cultural context helps specify what it means to be identified as straight, gay or lesbian.
Observing an ESL Class
Choices and challenges teachers face when when facilitating classroom inquiry on SI.
A teacher wonders if s/he would be viewed as a homosexual and if that would affect the dynamics and attitudes of the class towards her/him and the learning area.
Activities should allow learners to speculate rather than debate issues of SI to avoid homophobia and/or heterosexism.
Choosing the “Right” Task
Teacher concerns incl. being unsure if students are interested or familiar with the topic.
Tasks should be accessible and potentially relevant to any student regardless of their SI
It should present different possibilities of interpretation of the SI in the task
Teachers must make sure that these tasks do not further marginalize the marginalized.
Discussion and Conclusion
SI are culturally readable acts or positionings that are inevitable and part of day-to-day interactions.
Teachers should keep in mind that even when SI are not being discussed, they are being read, produced and regulated during social interactions.
In ESL, learners, teachers, teacher educators and material developers should include identities with the intention of facilitating inquiry and not for the sake of inclusion.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Who's Worth More? - Peter Medgyes
In 2005, I was a Freshman at the University of Limpopo and I had three professors for English (viz. one for Literature, one for Linguistics and one for Language - Grammar). The grammar professor was a, with the lack of a "good" word, Native Speaker of English from the US of America. We never really like her class because of her teaching methods that were more hands-on and required us to do more homework than we enjoyed. While she gave us instructions on basic grammar rules, there were cases were these grammatical rules went unexplained while in the NNEST classes the professor would try by every means to explain why grammatical rules have to be applied. E.g. the NEST professor may say "a 2nd person singular takes an 's'" and leave at that, the NNEST would say that and explain why it has to be like that occasionally code-switching to Sotho(Sotho was a dominating language in the class hence assuming the "language to fall back to" when English became to difficult to understand). And this was regardless of the English "section" (i.e. Grammar, Literature or Linguistics) that they had to handle. Hence we enjoyed the NNEST English classes as compared to their counter NEST part.
Peter Medgyes asks a rather odd and interesting question in this article, who's worth more? When I started reading this article, I was greatly interested in his method of weighing who's worth more and at the same time wondering if we could have factors that we could use to measure the worthiness of these speakers. At first he uses the native competence/native-like proficiency, of which he points out that NNS would never be at a NS language proficience level. From that he points out that NSs are at an advantage. Later on he gives us the advantages that NNESTs have. 1. Models of successful English Learning. 2. Effective teaching of learning strategies. 3. Source of in depth information about the English language, hence my example in the opening paragraph. 4. Ability to anticipate language difficulties. 5. More emphatic to the language needs and problems of their learners and 6. the sharing of a mother tongue with the learners.
The NNEST advantages show us some of the things that NEST can not do making a NNEST a valuable part of ELT. To some degree they point out that Learners of English would more often than not go through conscious learning of the language of which the NNEST have an idea of what's going on. A NEST knows the language mostly if not totally through acquisition (unconscious learning) while a NNEST knows it through learning (conscious learning). Thus suggesting that NNESTs relate better to the learners' English Language Learning (ELL).
My last teaching job was at a province where they speak a language (Sotho) which was completely different to my mother tongue (Zulu/Swati). And I was an English teacher at a rural school where the learners never speak in English unless if they are required to give an answer in English (in the classroom). The first two months were difficult for I had learned the colloquial of Sotho and the learners were using a complete different Sotho from the one I had learned. Their previous English teachers had thought them English constantly code switching to their mother tongue to explain difficult concepts and I could do that. Not because I didn't want to but because I couldn't. I took it upon myself to learn the learners L1 to make teaching and learning easier for us ( especially me). As time went by, we (the learners and me) started enjoying teaching and learning because I could 1. easily code-switch to their colloquial and 2. refer to my language learning experiences to explain concepts. I find it really interesting that Medgyes mentions the necessity for one to learn the learners L1 to make ELT and ELL more effective.
All that being said, it remains on the shoulders of us as NNESTs and NESTs to see the need to work together for effective ELT/ELL. For a NNEST needs the competence of a NEST and a NESt needs the expertise of a NNEST. Given the fact that we admit to the fact that we need each other NS or NNS, we need to be recognised as an Alliance of Language (English) Teachers. There's one question that we need to address, how do we convince the school's stakeholders (i.e. the learners, parents, school officials, sponsors and the communities that they serve) that a teacher is a good enough teacher or worthy teacher regardless of their L1? How do we bring them to realise that we need both NEST and NNEST (or whatever the case might be) in ELT/ELL?
Peter Medgyes asks a rather odd and interesting question in this article, who's worth more? When I started reading this article, I was greatly interested in his method of weighing who's worth more and at the same time wondering if we could have factors that we could use to measure the worthiness of these speakers. At first he uses the native competence/native-like proficiency, of which he points out that NNS would never be at a NS language proficience level. From that he points out that NSs are at an advantage. Later on he gives us the advantages that NNESTs have. 1. Models of successful English Learning. 2. Effective teaching of learning strategies. 3. Source of in depth information about the English language, hence my example in the opening paragraph. 4. Ability to anticipate language difficulties. 5. More emphatic to the language needs and problems of their learners and 6. the sharing of a mother tongue with the learners.
The NNEST advantages show us some of the things that NEST can not do making a NNEST a valuable part of ELT. To some degree they point out that Learners of English would more often than not go through conscious learning of the language of which the NNEST have an idea of what's going on. A NEST knows the language mostly if not totally through acquisition (unconscious learning) while a NNEST knows it through learning (conscious learning). Thus suggesting that NNESTs relate better to the learners' English Language Learning (ELL).
My last teaching job was at a province where they speak a language (Sotho) which was completely different to my mother tongue (Zulu/Swati). And I was an English teacher at a rural school where the learners never speak in English unless if they are required to give an answer in English (in the classroom). The first two months were difficult for I had learned the colloquial of Sotho and the learners were using a complete different Sotho from the one I had learned. Their previous English teachers had thought them English constantly code switching to their mother tongue to explain difficult concepts and I could do that. Not because I didn't want to but because I couldn't. I took it upon myself to learn the learners L1 to make teaching and learning easier for us ( especially me). As time went by, we (the learners and me) started enjoying teaching and learning because I could 1. easily code-switch to their colloquial and 2. refer to my language learning experiences to explain concepts. I find it really interesting that Medgyes mentions the necessity for one to learn the learners L1 to make ELT and ELL more effective.
All that being said, it remains on the shoulders of us as NNESTs and NESTs to see the need to work together for effective ELT/ELL. For a NNEST needs the competence of a NEST and a NESt needs the expertise of a NNEST. Given the fact that we admit to the fact that we need each other NS or NNS, we need to be recognised as an Alliance of Language (English) Teachers. There's one question that we need to address, how do we convince the school's stakeholders (i.e. the learners, parents, school officials, sponsors and the communities that they serve) that a teacher is a good enough teacher or worthy teacher regardless of their L1? How do we bring them to realise that we need both NEST and NNEST (or whatever the case might be) in ELT/ELL?
Sunday, October 18, 2009
"Breaking Them Up, Taking Them Away": ESLStudents in Grade 1 by Kelleen Toohey (1998)
This is a very interesting article because it challenges the “normal” classroom practices that we grow under and went as far as teaching in, for the few that have taught before. It took me back to my days in primary school, where the seating arrangements were according to our performance. We were assigned desks and/or tables and chairs. If you had a chair, we went as far as writing our names on them so that people might know that it was ours! The arrangement was such that you cannot see the next person’s work (“copy”) and everyone was encouraged to do their own work.
The education system has advocated for the development of learners to become individuals and members of the society that they belong to. The idea of individual seating and taking definite ownership of your own ideas has been used as a way of supporting the idea of individuality. Well, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the promoting individuality unless if it means your learners wouldn’t “fit” into the societies they come from. Unfortunately, societies, as pointed out in the article, are usually working in unison. There is a very slim chance of individuality in the school playgrounds and the communities that these learners go back to. The problem with system’s (system refers to the education system and its underlying policies) idea of promoting individualism is definitely not short term thing but something that affects learners on the long run. The long run may be within a few months i.e. Surjeet’s later interactions with Mary. The anxiety caused by the “hatred”, with the lack of a good word, from Mary that may lead to hatred towards her and anyone of her “kind”. This idea of individuality also becomes a problem when the learners move to the next class or grade, where the instructor may be using a different approach to the one before.
This article is based on the observations made by Kelleen Toohey during her longitudinal ethnographic research project in a Grade 1 classroom enrolling L2 learners and Anglophones. She looks at this class using the community-of-practice perspective to teaching practice and she looks at three elements i.e. the distribution of physical (sitting in your own desk), material (using your own things like pencil, crayons etc.) and intellectual (using your own ideas and words). She points outs that as far as these three elements seem to be the best way of doing things but they strategically sideline and disadvantage L2 learners throughout their L2 their learning. To explain this even further, she brings a picture of the seating arrangement in the class of research and points out the “community stratification” (p. 61). The stratification results to the sidelining “of some learners from certain activities, practices, identities, and affiliations (p. 80).
Community stratification is what I saw at this one school I taught at for 2 months; there were three 11th grade classes viz. 11A, 11B and 11C and they were all taking English as a Home language (EHL). The school is a multiracial school with Indians, Africans (Blacks), Colored and Whites (Afrikaans speaking and English speaking). There was a fair distribution of Indians, Coloreds and Whites with a few Black kids who came from wealthy families in both classes 11B and 11C. 11A was a predominantly Black class with four Indians (they appeared to be from families that are not doing too well). Now the interesting thing about these classes is that B and C had a White instructor Ms. Kelly* and A had a black instructor Ms. Sono* teaching the same contents from the same syllabus but exams were set by Ms. Kelly. As it may appear, Ma’am Sono’s class was deemed a poor performing class that doesn’t deserve to take English as a Home Language. I was made to understand, by teachers from other departments within the school, that there were three reasons to this “judgement”; (i) the English department had an attitude towards Ms. Sono because they believed she was “unfit” to teach grade 11 as compared to her counterpart Ms. Kelly who has successfully produced A+ students in grade 12. (ii) The learners is her class were “just black kids who are trying to go up” and they came from “lower” class families. And (iii) the teaching methods in these classes were different such that Ms. Kelly’s classes would do a revision coupled with questions that might appear in the exam paper. And Miss Sono’s class was to study everything they could get their hands on because they never knew the scope of their exam (and that also applied to the Ms. Sono, who never saw the paper until the morning of the exam).
This goes to show that community stratification of this society was that if you have money or if you are from a family that is doing well then you deserve “better” education. It also shows that if say the three classes had to do projects where there should be creativity (in a sense that there should be charts, crayoning and etc.) involved and the learners had to use their own resources. There’s a great chance that the posters or charts from B and C will appear attractive as compared to those of class A. On the other hand, the fact that 11A is viewed as failures by the school society (the teachers) undermines the idea of individuality that the school is trying to promote. How so? Well learners from 11A as seen as grade 11A learners and not as individual learners who happen to be in a class that is underperforming. At the same time, these learners are being rejected by the very society that they are supposed to display their individuality in.
Toohey points out that out that some things are beyond the control of a teacher per se. These include the availability of material (having table at school instead of desks) in schools and the education policies. She also points out that school policies basically says we should assess learners as individuals. She says “despite these perspectives (from TARG members), schools seem to hold that children must learn on their own and display their own learning” (Toohey, TQ Dialogues, p. 94, 2003).
The article raises questions like what is to be done by us, as “informed” educators to better the situations in our schools. This is with the fact that our teaching is guided by policies and rigid-made-to-look-flexible time frames in mind. How do we get the whole society to rally behind us and as some point forget about its expectations (that learners are to display their individual learning)? Do we reflect the learners’ strength in terms of working with others in their report cards?
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people concerned.
The education system has advocated for the development of learners to become individuals and members of the society that they belong to. The idea of individual seating and taking definite ownership of your own ideas has been used as a way of supporting the idea of individuality. Well, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the promoting individuality unless if it means your learners wouldn’t “fit” into the societies they come from. Unfortunately, societies, as pointed out in the article, are usually working in unison. There is a very slim chance of individuality in the school playgrounds and the communities that these learners go back to. The problem with system’s (system refers to the education system and its underlying policies) idea of promoting individualism is definitely not short term thing but something that affects learners on the long run. The long run may be within a few months i.e. Surjeet’s later interactions with Mary. The anxiety caused by the “hatred”, with the lack of a good word, from Mary that may lead to hatred towards her and anyone of her “kind”. This idea of individuality also becomes a problem when the learners move to the next class or grade, where the instructor may be using a different approach to the one before.
This article is based on the observations made by Kelleen Toohey during her longitudinal ethnographic research project in a Grade 1 classroom enrolling L2 learners and Anglophones. She looks at this class using the community-of-practice perspective to teaching practice and she looks at three elements i.e. the distribution of physical (sitting in your own desk), material (using your own things like pencil, crayons etc.) and intellectual (using your own ideas and words). She points outs that as far as these three elements seem to be the best way of doing things but they strategically sideline and disadvantage L2 learners throughout their L2 their learning. To explain this even further, she brings a picture of the seating arrangement in the class of research and points out the “community stratification” (p. 61). The stratification results to the sidelining “of some learners from certain activities, practices, identities, and affiliations (p. 80).
Community stratification is what I saw at this one school I taught at for 2 months; there were three 11th grade classes viz. 11A, 11B and 11C and they were all taking English as a Home language (EHL). The school is a multiracial school with Indians, Africans (Blacks), Colored and Whites (Afrikaans speaking and English speaking). There was a fair distribution of Indians, Coloreds and Whites with a few Black kids who came from wealthy families in both classes 11B and 11C. 11A was a predominantly Black class with four Indians (they appeared to be from families that are not doing too well). Now the interesting thing about these classes is that B and C had a White instructor Ms. Kelly* and A had a black instructor Ms. Sono* teaching the same contents from the same syllabus but exams were set by Ms. Kelly. As it may appear, Ma’am Sono’s class was deemed a poor performing class that doesn’t deserve to take English as a Home Language. I was made to understand, by teachers from other departments within the school, that there were three reasons to this “judgement”; (i) the English department had an attitude towards Ms. Sono because they believed she was “unfit” to teach grade 11 as compared to her counterpart Ms. Kelly who has successfully produced A+ students in grade 12. (ii) The learners is her class were “just black kids who are trying to go up” and they came from “lower” class families. And (iii) the teaching methods in these classes were different such that Ms. Kelly’s classes would do a revision coupled with questions that might appear in the exam paper. And Miss Sono’s class was to study everything they could get their hands on because they never knew the scope of their exam (and that also applied to the Ms. Sono, who never saw the paper until the morning of the exam).
This goes to show that community stratification of this society was that if you have money or if you are from a family that is doing well then you deserve “better” education. It also shows that if say the three classes had to do projects where there should be creativity (in a sense that there should be charts, crayoning and etc.) involved and the learners had to use their own resources. There’s a great chance that the posters or charts from B and C will appear attractive as compared to those of class A. On the other hand, the fact that 11A is viewed as failures by the school society (the teachers) undermines the idea of individuality that the school is trying to promote. How so? Well learners from 11A as seen as grade 11A learners and not as individual learners who happen to be in a class that is underperforming. At the same time, these learners are being rejected by the very society that they are supposed to display their individuality in.
Toohey points out that out that some things are beyond the control of a teacher per se. These include the availability of material (having table at school instead of desks) in schools and the education policies. She also points out that school policies basically says we should assess learners as individuals. She says “despite these perspectives (from TARG members), schools seem to hold that children must learn on their own and display their own learning” (Toohey, TQ Dialogues, p. 94, 2003).
The article raises questions like what is to be done by us, as “informed” educators to better the situations in our schools. This is with the fact that our teaching is guided by policies and rigid-made-to-look-flexible time frames in mind. How do we get the whole society to rally behind us and as some point forget about its expectations (that learners are to display their individual learning)? Do we reflect the learners’ strength in terms of working with others in their report cards?
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people concerned.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Teaching and Researching Language and Culture K.J. Hall (2002)
—Teaching and Researching Language and CultureK.J. Hall (2002)
—Sbusiso Ngomane
—ENG 625: Dr. L. Seloni
—Language and Identity
—… In each of these pictures, what is that one thing that comes to your mind, in terms of citizenship and English level of competence, when you look at them?
—…
—Social Identity
—Every individual has a social background and we see this when we use language.
—Our membership to different social groups accounts to these social backgrounds, i.e. Jews, Muslims, South Africans or Italians.
—The values, beliefs and attitudes associated with our group memberships are significant to the development of our social identities. (Gee, 1996; Ochs, 1993; Tajfel and Turner, 1986)
—Social Identity: Habitus
—The skills, knowledge, attitudes and beliefs comprising our various social identities - predisposing us to act, think and feel in particular ways and to perceive the involvement of others in a certain way.
—E.g. When a native speaker, “automatically”, speaks slow when speaking to a L2 speaker.
—We use this to make sense of each other’s involvement during communication.
—Social Identity: Contextual relevancy
—Our backgrounds, i.e. South African, Christian, Black, etc, show that we have multiple backgrounds but not all of them are relevant (depending on the situation).
—During communications, we consider our goals and the identities of the other participants before assuming a certain identity. E.g. International tourists v/s Local tourists
—Thus, we use our linguistic resources to meet our needs.
—
Agency, Identity and Language Use
—We make up societies and societies make up our identities, therefore, we play a huge role in shaping our identities.
—Language use makes the construction of identity an incomplete process.
—While social identities influence our linguistic actions, they do not determine them!!!
—
Agency, Identity and Language Use:Giddens’ Theory of Structuration
—Theory of Structuration – individual agency is a semiotic activity, a social construction, ‘something that has to be routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the individual’ (Anthony Giddens, 1984 and 1991).
—Patterns develop from social structures repeated in recurring social practices.
—
Agency, Identity and Language Use:Bourdieu’s Notion of Habitus
—Habitus is accountable for our actions.
—It gives experience meaning.
—It seeks to create the conditions most favourable to what it is. (e.g. reaching a consensus).
—
Research on Language Use and Identity
—Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS)
—Interactional Sociolinguistics (IS)
—Steered by the notion of Contextualization cues (Ref.: pp 38-39 for definition).
—These cues encompass various forms of speech production i.e. lexical, syntactic, pragmatic and paralinguistic.
—Co-construction of Identity (CI)
—Ref.: p 43 for definition
—Concerned about the different resources that mark individuals as different in different contexts.
— This includes eye contact, body posture and personal space. E.g.: Algerians v/s Americans
—Turn-taking patterns and the language code which result in mutual adjustment to reach the “communication goal”.
—Kandiah (1991) held a different view, pointing out that the cues could not account fully for any miscommunication.
—Macro patterns of identity development, such as self-perception and beliefs, should be recognized during identity development research.
—Identities are not just reproduced but are transformed!!!
—
Language-and-Culture Learning
—A sociocultural perspective
—Language socialization
—Learning how to mean
—Social activity and Language development
—Social activity and cognitive development
—Language classrooms as fundamental sites of learning
—
A Sociocultural Perspective
—We learn to recognize what is happening and predict what shall happen next by spending more time with experienced members of the society.
—We develop an understanding of the sociocultural importance of the activity, its values and goals, and the roles we, and the other participants, are appropriated into playing.
—The process of appropriation takes place in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). – Vygotsky,1978.
—ZPD is ‘the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers’ (ibid.:86).
—ZPD – scaffolding, modeling and training.
—A Sociocultural Perspective: Mediational means
—The resources used by expert members to assist less competent participants in noticing, ordering, representing and remembering their involvement in their communicative activities.
—They can be verbal, visual or physical, i.e. a calendar or a map.
—They give form and meaning to the actions we take to enhance, and give form to, individual development.
—Language Socialization
—Language is used to socialize children into meaningful, appropriate and effective uses of language and at the same time into culturally specific ways of thinking and knowing (Ochs and Schieffelin,1982).
—Indexicality – the process by which situational meanings (e.g. social id., resource, et cetera) are assigned to forms (e.g. intonation patterns, speech acts, turn-taking patterns).
—
Learning How to Mean
—The interpretation of a child’s utterances, by adults, in a way that made sense to them in the interaction with the child, influences what the child eventually learns (Halliday, 1975).
—Children learn language by ‘learning how to behave in situations, not by learning rules about what to say’ ( Halliday et al., 1964: 179).
—Language learning and the act of learning culture are mutually constitutive.
—Language allows us to coordinate activities with others and learn the knowledge, practices, beliefs and values of their culture.
—In learning a language a child’s duty is construct the systems of meanings that represents his own model of social reality.
—Social Activity and Language Development
—Recurring communicative activities (or repeated experience) helps the child to acquire both the forms and meanings.
—They actively select and attend to specific kinds of information, hypothesize about the meaning of their and others’ actions.
—Context-orientated communication is shown in Tomasello et al. (1990) of caregiver-child talk: mother-child v/s father-child interaction
—The authors pointed out that this responses by the child to each parent’s non-acknowledgements arose from the interaction experiences they have with both parents.
—Contextual conditions in the process (of Language learning) include frequency of appearance in the linguistic environment, clarity of their form-function relationship, learner’s interest and understanding the purpose.
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Social Activity and Cognitive Development
—Studies show that young children’s description of spatial arrangements are more similar to descriptions by adult speakers of their particular language group than they are to descriptions by children of the same age group but in different language groups.
—Language-specific development gives shape to cognitive organization and perception by filtering ‘incoming information, leading children to pay more or less attention to different aspects of reality, … (Hickmann, 2001: 113)
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—Language-specific development gives shape to cognitive organization and perception by filtering ‘incoming information, leading children to pay more or less attention to different aspects of reality, … (Hickmann, 2001: 113)
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Language Classrooms as Fundamental Sites of Learning
—Learner participation, with more experienced participants i.e. their teachers, in the classroom develops habits of participation.
—Resulting in the socialization of learners to understand their roles and relationships considered as important tot heir lives as learners.
—Not only does learning take place, but learners are shaped for a broader picture, like partaking in future educational events and the roles and membership they hold as participants.
—Individual language behavior can only be understood through examining its sociocultural origins and evolution.
—Thus saying, the communicative activities of the classroom and their resources, the particular participants and their histories, and the very process by which participants conjointly use the resources to accomplish their lives as members of their classrooms or other learning contexts, become the fundamental units of analysis.
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Conclusion
—While classroom are indeed important sites of learning, they are not the only places where language learning occurs.
—Teach with your heart, for the identities of your learners are at your mercy!
—Teach with your heart, for the identities of your learners are at your mercy!
Things to think about…
1. The “more traditional ‘linguistics applied’ approach” (Hall, 2002), suggests that cultural norms exist in isolation and we are said to “play no role in defining cultural norms” (page 32), all we do is reflect them. Having not read this article, would you agree or disagree with this statement and why?
2. What are the social identity differences that we have in this class and which one(s) will be relevant in this “situation”?
3. Would a change in setting (e.g. going to another country, state or town for more than a week, so to say.) change the “shape” of our identity?
4. Do actions, incl. linguistic actions, exist in isolation of any social context? (Do we really have objective research?)
5. To what extent do you agree or disagree with the statement, “Any misuse or misinterpretation of cues is assumed to be due to the lack of shared knowledge of specific cue meanings.” (p39)?
1. The “more traditional ‘linguistics applied’ approach” (Hall, 2002), suggests that cultural norms exist in isolation and we are said to “play no role in defining cultural norms” (page 32), all we do is reflect them. Having not read this article, would you agree or disagree with this statement and why?
2. What are the social identity differences that we have in this class and which one(s) will be relevant in this “situation”?
3. Would a change in setting (e.g. going to another country, state or town for more than a week, so to say.) change the “shape” of our identity?
4. Do actions, incl. linguistic actions, exist in isolation of any social context? (Do we really have objective research?)
5. To what extent do you agree or disagree with the statement, “Any misuse or misinterpretation of cues is assumed to be due to the lack of shared knowledge of specific cue meanings.” (p39)?
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