Week 3

This week’s readings mainly focused on identity, both Pavlenko’s The Making of an American and Holliday discuss quite a bit about identity, cultural identity. How do we construct our identities and how do we choose how we want to be represented to others? As Pavlenko’s states in his article, identity is the dynamic and shifting nexus of multiple subject positions, or identity options. Meaning someone is acknowledged as a mother, an accountant, heterosexual or Latina. These are done by narrative identity construction. A large portion of the article looks at these narratives by immigrants that came to America in the early 1900s. The narrative identity construction is done though both fiction and non-fiction roots and in this case we have non-fiction; autobiographies.

When it comes to immigration, it then leads to assimilation. This assimilation of immigrants in the United States then creates an identity for each one, but these identities are considered imaginable or negotiable because society back in the day gave its members identity options. This is surprising to me because it makes it seem like is society didn’t “approve” of someone’s particular identity, they were then rejected until they were accepted. The whole heterosexual vs. homosexual has always been a debate in our society and even though it is becoming a more “acceptable” identity, people who possess this particular identity still don’t feel as though they belong.

This is often the case with immigrants. The people who come to the United States to pursue the “American Dream” are often assimilating in a way that they love their own personal and cultural identity. I took a Latino Studies class my first year at the university and we learned about Mexican-American students whose parents are native Spanish speakers who teach their kids Spanish in the home but when they come to school they are speaking English and possibly Spanish with other Spanish speakers. Why should we shut down these kids from keeping their one identity from interacting with another one. It’s important to encourage students to keep their identities. I believe that cultural identities help make this country as diverse as it is.

It’s not possible to narrow down the nation to one identity and culture. We are all made up of different identities. I come from a Greek and Hispanic background. Those are two identities I already possess along with the very traditional culture of both worlds. My parents still feel as though they are considered foreigners because of their heavy accents when speaking the English language even though they’ve basically assimilated very well to American culture. I can say that even though they have assimilated, they still keep their cultural traditions close to heart and have passed it on to their kin.

Cultural identity is a very important thing when it comes to teaching students. We as teachers need to understand that every student comes from their own set of ideas, likes, dislikes, and philosophies and we are in no position as a society to damper anyone’s identity just because it’s taboo or looked at from a different light in our society. As stated before, it’s impossible for there to be one accepted identity or culture because of the amount of diversity within just one person.

Week 2

            To start off my blog for ENG343, there seems to be a reoccurring theme, which clearly has a lot to do with what will be discussed throughout the semester in this class. This theme is culture. What is culture? How do we define it? How do people feel about it? In the field of TESOL, we as future educators need to understand that culture comes in hand with the learners and speakers of the other languages. These individuals have a culture that they belong to and they are learning a whole new language with its own set of cultures. This can be very hard for a language learner, because it’s so much more than just learning a language. In Atkinson’s article, it was said that educators and others believe that “culture” has no place in education. Is this even possible? I believe that culture exists in all fields, and there’s virtually no avoiding it. How can a teacher say that there is no place for culture in their classroom? The overall definition of culture in TESOL could definitely be revised, but how do we do this without trying to intentionally get rid of it?

            Culture is a very touchy subject in many areas of our society. I took a class my freshman year here at ISU and it was about Latin/Hispanic studies and mainly focused on immigration of Latin Americans to the United States and how they had to deal with several issues. Assimilation is part of this, and I was reading in my text how students were punished and frowned upon for using their native language in the classroom with other native speakers. Punishing a student for this kind of thing presents a certain image of the culture to the student when they are trying to accommodate themselves to a whole new one.

            When reading Holliday’s essentialist vs. non-essentialist, I found it very interesting. It seems to me that the essentialist is very confined and a bit more narrow-minded. The culture is smaller and they’re not very open to change while the non-essentialist is the opposite. It’s not based on location, and it’s more interchangeable. I agree and indentify myself more with the non-essentialist point of view because I myself am always open to change, learning new things, learning about new cultures, people and languages and personally possess a background of diversity.

            Overall, I believe the readings were very important and very interesting. These topics on culture, individualism vs. collectivism and the principles of culture were the topics with the most impact to me. These all helped me piece together the different parts and definitions of the term “culture” and help me view it as more than just a word. Knowing the differences will help all future educators of multicultural and multilingual classrooms better their practice.