Week 15

This week my group and I presented our article discussion.

:)

Week 14

This week's reading began with chapter 5 in McKay in which linguitic diversity of English use. Throughout the chapter I began to realize that learners of English are using both their TL and their NL when communicating. I was wondering to myself if this would an example of interlanguage, since they're not just necessarily creating a system but also speaking with it. When we really stop and think about it, our world is becoming more bilingual everyday. English learning is present in countries all over the world, and this in hand creates different variations and dialects of English itself. Throughout the outer circle countries and expanding circle countries, the standardized varieties of English are growing in number. So, we have all of these immigrants coming to the United States, with their own standardized variety of English, but they're still put down and told to learn OUR standard English? What is even our standard, or "correct" English? You can't expect to have an immigrant come, having learned some English outside of the country, and being a native to ANOTHER country come without speaking differently, or with a dialect, or an accent.
It's been stated that a standard language is what is to be considered the "norm". Again, what does this even mean? What is considered the norm of English? Is it English in the south? In the midwest? The east? Is it English from the U.K? How can we as educators be expected to encourage our students to speak in their dialects, etc, but also expect us to tell them to use the "standard"? I believe that this concept is a hard one to really figure out because English learning has become so prominent in countries and the circles are expanding, changes are being made constantly, and this then leads to changes being made to this so-called standard.

I was surprised (but at the same time... not so much) when I read in Lippie-Green about the Hawaiin man who was turned down for his job because of his accent. His Hawaiin accent classified his speech as not standard English, even though he speaks English fine. Where and when will the line be drawn? It can't expected to have people come to this country without accents. You can't expect standard English to have a non-accent status. How does that even make sense?

Week 13

When I started reading chapter 4 in McKay and Bokhorst-Heng, the first thing that caught my attention was the word "politicking". The term language politicking refers to the worldliness of language in the context of language planning and policy activity. With this language planning, it has intensified with globalization as a strong organizing force in human interaction and has added a new layer to previously largely nationalist-driven agenda with language planning. I found it interesting that Singapore of all countries that teach English is one that spends a lot of time in English education. "Small in size, big on language", Singapore has a densely multilingual population, and bilingualism is very big, where about 50% of the class time is dedicated to language learning. I believe that American schools should look at Singapore as a good example to follow. We should encourage our students to learn and speak other language aside from their mother tongue, or the nation's main language of English. If we don't encourage this kind of language education, our world will indeed become a monolinguistic place. The death of language needs to be prevented because with the loss and death of languages comes the loss of cultures and identities, each of which belong to people all around the world. This is what worries me the most.

Week 12

For week 12, our reading came from McKay and Bokhorst-Heng. We were to read both chapters two and three. What stood out the most to me when going through and reading, were the different social contexts in which English is learned as an international language. English learning can be viewed as concentric circles, in which there is the Inner Circle; English is the primary language of the country, the Outer Circle; in which English is a second language in a multilingual country, and the Expanding Circle; in which English is studied as a foreign language. I find the concept of these circles very intriguing as well as a great way to really capture and describe the way English is viewed as when spread about the world and is constantly changing. This constant changing makes the differences between these circles more permeable, which I think is a good thing because when it comes to EIL learning, change is always a good thing.

Another point that was made in this chapter was the idea of examining identity of second language learners and how it aids in second language acquisition. I believe that in order for a student to successfully acquire a second language, we as future teachers must understand once again the importance of the identity of the language learner. Where they come from, who they are and what they're ideologies are will all play an important part in their acquisition of a second language. If we sit there and criticize our students for not understand a particular concept in the English language, how are we allowed to expect them to be encouraged to continue or put forth their best effort. If we put down English language learners and put down their own personal cultures how can we expect them to want to learn the language and more about the culture they've moved into? As stated in the book, "classrooms are becoming increasingly heterogenous in language and culture, it is important to know that dynamics, the potential, and the implication of popular culture in such classrooms, not only for the students' language and subject matter learning, but for their identities as individuals in societies which are new to many of them" (page38).

From Chapter 3, the concept of diglossia caught my attention the most. Diglossic multilingualism  is when a many L2 speakers of English of bilingual or multilingual contexts won't use English as the dominant language in all situations of communication. An example of these would be my mom. My mom's NL or L1 is Spanish and she doesn't always speak English even though she can speak it a proficiency level.  She speaks a lot of Spanish and even when she knows that someone she comes in contact with does indeed speak Spanish as well, she will communicate with them in Spanish over English. Diglossia is when speakers have two or more languages in their repertoire and choice of which language to use is dependent on their linguistic norms, values, and practices. This applies to the use of H-language over L-language and vice versa because this is dependent on the formality of the situation. I think this is a very important concept to remember as a future educator.