ENG 345 Methods and Materials Wk 13

Curriculum Design and Lesson Planning

Brown Chapters 9-11, Kumar Chapter 13


Brown chapter nine discussed curriculum design. He explains the development process for any given curriculum, that is, situation analysis, needs analysis, and problematizing the curriculum. Also he discusses goals ("broadly based aims and purposes in an educational context") and objectives("aims and purposes within the narrow context of a lesson or an activity within a lesson") for a curriculum, and what to consider when choosing textbooks and materials and how these materials will fit into a curriculum. Finally, he explains the importance of program or curriculum evaluation, and how to evaluate. I thought this chapter was awesome. It might be a little nerdy but I don't care: in my spare time I often thinkt about how to design a curriculum for a TESOL course. It is just something that I am really fascinated by. Some questions I have are: How do you structure a course? How will the structure of the course operate to the benefit and detriment of the students learning? Before this chapter, I only had a rough and inexperienced idea of how a curriculum could be put together. Now I feel like I can better imagine a curriculum supported by functional theory, even if this chapter is only a broad overview. One thing I had not considered about curriculum design was the integral nature of the lesson plan as a building block.

Brown chapter ten discussed the nature of a successful lesson plan. Brown defines a lesson as "a unified set of procedures that cover a period of classroom time, usually ranging from 45 to 120 minutes." and "are practical tangible units of effort that serve to provide a rhythm to a course of study" (164). Lessons should have both goals and objectives, and these should contribute or factor in course goals in some way. Brown distinguishes between two types of objectives; terminal and enabling. Terminal objectives are final learning outcomes, while enabling are interim steps within a lesson that build upon each other and ultimately lead to a terminal objective (165). Brown explains what else goes into a lesson plan, materials, procedures, and assessment. He then gives some guidelines for lesson planning, which I thought will be highly valuable for the upcoming teaching demonstration. He also provides a sample lesson plan.

Brown chapter eleven discussed techniques and materials. It was helpful for me to think of techniques as building blocks to a lesson. Brown writes that technique is "a superordinate term to refer to various activities that either teachers or learners perform in the classroom... techniques include all tasks and activities." (180). He then talks about different ways to classify techniques, how to possibly adapt a textbook passage to utilize different techniques, and finally other ways to incorporate texts and visual aids in a TESOL classroom.

The last chapter of the reading for this week was Kumar's chapter 13, Monitoring Teaching Acts. In this chapter Kumar discussed the importance of interpreting what goes on in the classroom from multiple perspectives, the teacher's, the students', and an observer. Through the multiple perspectives, Kumar argues that we will be able to better interpret what happened in the classroom. Kumar provides an observation scheme called the "M & M" scheme. It is a three stage activity, he writes. First, preobservation, observation itself, and post-observation, "in which the observer and the teacher select a few episodes for detailed treatment, analyze classroom input and interaction, interpret their analysis, derive pedagogic implications, and put all this experiential knowledge together to develop a personal theory of practice."(location 3342)

ENG 345 Methods and Materials Wk 11

Week 11 Blog Response

Integrating language skills

"While insights from L2 acquisition research has been sparse, experiential knowledge has helped language eduactors realize that linguistic input to learners should be presented in units of text, or what we now call discourse, so that learners can benefit from the interactive effect of various components and contexts." -Kumaravadivelu

Brown chapter 17, Kumar chapters 9 and 10

    These chapters focused on language integration across the four traditionally defined language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing. Both Brown and Kumar note the recent trends in segmenting these skills, and also the counter-trend toward integration of these skills. Kumar points out a number of studies that show the benefits of skills integration in the ESL classroom. Brown discusses five different models for integrating the skills.
    There are content-based instruction and it's weaker form, theme-based instruction. The former focuses on content specifically (perhaps at the expense of explicit language instruction/objectives), while theme-based instruction places a greater emphasis on language objectives within the framework of content themes. Brown also discusses task-based language teaching, experiential learning and the episode hypothesis. "Experiential learning includes activities that engage both left- and right-brain processing, that contextualize language, that integrate skills, and that point toward authentic, real-world purposes." (Brown 291). The episode hypothesis argues that successful language learning and teaching occurs when language is presented in an easily followed storyline (Brown 293).
    Kumar also discusses in chapter 9 how to contextualize linguistic input. In this chapter Kumar talks about the way language "invokes context as well as... provides context". He then discusses how language joins these realities, which are: linguistic, extralinguistic, situational, and extrasituational.
    Linguistic context is "the immediate linguistic environment that contains formal aspects of language required for the process of meaning-making."
    Extralinguistic context refers to "the immediate linguistic environment that contains prosodic signals such as stress and intonation."
    Situational context requires that "one goes eyond the linguistic and extralinguistic contexts in which it occurs and considers the situational context as well."
    Extrasituational context explores, according to McCarthy and Carter (1994) "the ways in which forms of language, from individual words to complete discourse structures, encode something of the beliefs and values held by the language user."
    The readings for today helped me to realize that it is important to integrate multiple language skills when teaching. In my mind I had it made up to focus on a particular form in the language, separate in a way from the context it is used. Say, a lesson on the past tense inflection in English. I would talk about how it is used to convey something that has happened in the past, and provide a few sentence examples likely in the form of written text on the board. But from the readings, it seems like a.) I would want to contextualize the form in a text that is appropriate (or meaningful) and b.) use multiple forms of presentation for the students (read the sentence aloud, write the sentence down, have the students speak the sentence). Using or integrating multiple language skills into a lesson not only appeals to a wide variety of learners, but it also strengthens the bonds between all the language skills and this increases the "communicative competence" of the students through creating what I understand to be opportunities for more meaningful learning than the traditional or more widely accepted methodologies.

-TfM

ENG 345 - Methods and Materials Week 9

Topic: Teaching of Reading and Writing

SUMMARY

Brown Chapter 20

This chapter was about the teaching of reading. In it Brown opens with some research that has been conducted on reading in a second language. He discusses schema theory and background knowledge. This section made me think about how much we bring to a text to help ourselves understand that text. A reader brings a wealth of experience to a text upon reading, and I think as a native speaker I take that for granted, or rather, didn't see how much content and formal schemata I actually have and bring to each text. Brown then presents a list of different genres of written language, and then discusses some general characteristics of written language, such as permanence, processing time, distance, orthography, complexity, vocabulary, and formality. Brown then provides strategies for reading comprehension, types of classroom reading performance, and then the following principles for teaching reading skills:

-Don't overlook a specific focus on reading skills
-use techniques that are intrinsically motivating
-balance authenticity and readability in choosing texts
-encourage the development of reading strategies
-include both bottom-up and top-down techniques
-follow the 'survey, question, read, recite, review' technique
-plan on pre-reading, during-reading, and after-reading phases
-build an assessment aspect into your techniques

Brown Chapter 21

This chapter was about the teaching of writing. Brown opens this chapter with a section of research in second language writing. He points out a lot of things I had not really considered before in this section. This chapter in particular made me reflect on my own writing practices as a student. Brown pushes for more process writing rather than product writing. The early focus, he argues, should be on how to write and revise and self-edit, rather than reaching some ideal error-free product of a paper, but hopes that this process will help students work toward that ideal. Brown also talks about Kaplan's contrastive rhetoric, and I like how he dealt with this: "you would be more prudent to adopt a 'weak' position in which you would consider a student's cultural/literacy schemata as only one possible source of difficulty." (394). Brown then discusses types of classroom writing performance, and then gives the following principles for teaching writing skills:

-incorporate practices of 'good' writers
-balance process and product
-account for cultural/literary backgrounds
-connect reading and writing
-provide as much authentic writing as possible
-frame your techniques in terms of prewriting, drafting, and revising stages
-strive to offer techniques that are as interactive as possible
-sensitively apply methods of responding to and correcting your students' writing
-clearly instruct students on the rhetorical, formal conventions of writing

Article: "Myth 5: Students Must Learn to Correct All Their Writing Errors" by Dana Ferris (2008)

This article aims to debunk the myth that ELLs NEED to learn to correct all errors in their writing. Ferris discusses her own experiences with teaching writing in the ESL classroom and then discusses what the research has shown regarding writing and the ELL. There are three observations she makes: (1) SLA takes time, (2) second-language writers' are different from native speakers', (3) even diligent correction and student editing does not lead to error-free production. She then goes on to talk about her experiences with altering the writing program she teaches, and how moving from a more display-writing oriented process to a more process-writing oriented process has dramatically improved the success rate of students in the program. She provides a number of tips and strategies that will be helpful when teaching writing in a classroom. I really enjoyed the idea of portfolio assessment (both as a student and as a future teacher) rather than an in-class writing essay.

ENG 345 Wk 8 - Teaching of Speaking and Listening

SUMMARY

Brown Chapters 18, 19

Chapter 18 was entitled "Teaching Listening". Brown talks about input and uptake according to Krashen (1985). He also discusses types of spoken language. Brown also discusses what makes listening difficult and points out eight characteristics of spoken language that attention needs to be paid to (p 304-306). He then discusses listening performance in the classroom (p 308-310). And finally some principles for teaching listening skills (310 - 312).

Chapter 19 was entitled "Teaching Speaking". In this chapter Brown discusses some of the theoretical foundations of teaching speaking in the classroom. He then talks about some of the difficulties of speaking, and the types of speaking that happen in the classroom. Finally he provides some principles for teaching speaking skills in the classroom (331 - 332). Brown then discusses the role of feedback and in what ways it can be utilized for enhancing students' speaking skills.

Kumar Chapter 5

This chapter was entitled "Facilitating Negotiated Interaction". In this chapter Kumar discusses three different types of interactional activities. He borrows these from Halliday: textual, interpersonal, and ideational.  Kumar then discusses the foundational theory behind these activities (Krashen, Vygotsky), and provides some classroom interactions for examples. Lastly, he provides four microstrategies to help demonstrate some of these points in action.

Cary 2008 - "How do I support a student's first language..."

This article discussed a woman named Delores' ESL classroom in California. It demonstrated a multitude of ways that an ESL/EFL teacher can be supportive of their students' first language. This involved a lot of code-switching activities, having presentations from the students' parents, and utilizing other community volunteers for assistance. I really enjoyed how she involved many members of the community to take part in the classroom activities.

RESPONSE

The Brown chapters were really practical and provided a wealth of information on how to approach teaching speaking and listening in the classroom, for all levels of learners. They will be invaluable resources going forward. The Kumar was a little less practical, or perhaps a bit more wordy than the Brown. One thing I noticed from one of the classroom examples in the Kumar was that a teacher asked a student to stop referring to their dictionary. This made me wonder, to what extent should we allow students to refer to a dictionary in class? The way I see it is that the dictionary is a resource that helps to facilitate understanding, (and probably in situations where I cannot provide a good explanation of a word  [i.e. translation]) so why should we say "No don't use a dictionary."

The way I saw it was that the teacher inhibited the learners' autonomy for learning by asking for the student to stop. I think I won't mind students using a dictionary in class. I would just have to pay close attention to the way in which the students are using it. On one hand, I don't students to become over-reliant on dictionary translations, but on the other hand I want students to be able to understand a topic. Hmm...

TfM

ENG 345 Methods and Materials - Week 5

Bax -  The End of CLT

"Here we have the main problem of CLT-- by its very emphasis on communication, and implicitly on methodology, it relegates and sidelines the context in which we teach, and therefore gives out the suggestion that CLT will work anywhere--" p 281

"Any training course should therefore make it a priority to teach not only methodology but also a heightened awareness of contextual factors, and an ability to deal with them--" p 283

"Good teachers naturally take account of the context in which they teach-- the culture, the students, and so on-- even when they hold that CLT is essentially the answer." p 284

Stephen Bax in this article argues that the CLT methodology overlooks or marginalizes the issue of classroom context, and then goes on to suggest an alternative approach to CLT called the Context Approach. As the name implies, the approach places at the forefront the context of the ESL/EFL classroom.

In the context approach, the teacher is responsible for understanding "individual students and their learning needs, wants, styles, and strategies... as well as the coursebook, local conditions, the classroom culture, school culture, national culture, and so on, as far as is possible at the time of teaching." (285)

The teacher then "identifies as suitable approach and language focus" (285) which is reliant upon the context analysis.

Response: I agree with Bax when he says that the profession needs to move beyond CLT and focus more on context. It seems intuitive that there should be no one Method with a capital 'M', free to be used anywhere regardless of the context in which it is being used. This article was written ten years ago, I wonder how the profession has responded Bax's intended paradigm shift away from CLT. The only thing that concerns me is the amount of responsibility that is placed on the individual teacher. Like, I wonder if I am even completely aware of my own context as a student in this very class*, so how would I even begin to assess the context of the classroom I'll supposedly be teaching in? So much, I feel, goes into being aware of all the things Bax suggests that a teacher be aware of, that it seems like an overwhelming task. Perhaps teachers should also be trained on how to look at context/culture.

*and further I wonder if this lack of awareness of context is in fact a result of the context I am a product of.


Hu - Potential Cultural Resistance to Pedagogical Imports


In this article Hu argues that transplanting CLT into the People's Republic of China ELT programs is problematic. This problem arises due to the differences in education philosophy between the origins of CLT and the traditional or mainstream attitudes toward education held by people in China. There are certain different expectations for how a classroom should be run in either (CLT vs. Chinese pedagogy) system. This does not mean however, Hu argues, that there are not parts of the CLT method that could work within a Chinese ELT classroom.

Response: This seems to me like a good example of how being unaware of the culture and context that you work in can be detrimental to the sort of ELT teaching you wish to do. Being aware of these classroom expectations is very important, it seems like. I just wonder what sort of information is out there like this for all the cultures, or if this research still needs to be done and organized and presented to local teachers in an efficient manner.

Skehan - Task-based instruction review

"The teacher, in other words, has to be prepared for learners to take interactions in whatever direction they choose. Then the teacher has to be ready to provide the unpredictable help that will be required." (p 11)

This article discussed the finer points of the theories that influence task-basked instruction. The author is very well read (to an overwhelming degree sometimes). The article covers the origins of task-based instruction, the prevailing perspectives on task-based instruction (cognitive, sociocultural, psycholinguistic, etc), how performance is measure in task-based instruction, how tasks are used in a classroom, and then finally some critiques of task-based instruction. It is a lot to cover in a short article. Very densely packed.

ENG 345 - Methods and Materials; WEEK 2

H. Douglas Brown Teaching by Principles

Chapters 1 and 2

Chapter one deals with a brief observational study in a private language classroom in Seoul, Korea. The author describes the setting and the lesson while providing other pertinent background information. Brown then goes on to analyze the lesson, asking questions regarding why the teacher would choose to do something a certain way or another. He writes "For every tiny moment of that classroom hour, certain choices were made, choices that can for the most part be justified by our collective knowledge of second language acquisition and teaching." (pg 8). Brown asks the final question too, "As you look back over the lesson you've just observed, do you think the initial objectives were accomplished?" (pg 10). I think this is a very important question to ask. It encourages teachers to consider and reflect upon their own methods and their usefulness.

Chapter two deals with a bunch of different methodologies that have been used in second language acquisition since teaching a second language became a thing. Brown provides some definitions of some words that may be useful going forward.

As defined by a number of scholars (pg 15):

Methodology - Pedagogical practices in general.

Approach - Theoretically well-informed positions and beliefs about the nature of language, the nature of language learning, and the applicability of both to pedagogical settings.

Method - A generalized set of classroom specifications for accomplishing linguistic objectives.

Curriculum/syllabus - Specifications for carrying out a particular language program.

Technique -  Any wide variety of exercises, activities, or tasks used in the language classroom for realizing lesson objectives.

Brown then goes on to explain a number of different methods used historically. I will not pass judgment on all of them here, in this section. They are : Grammar translation method, the series method, the direct method, the audiolingual method, cognitive code learning, community language learning, suggestopedia, the silent way, total physical response, the natural approach, functional syllabuses. A detailed explanation of these methods can be found on pages 36 & 37 in Brown's book.


N.S. Prabhu - There Is No Best Method -- Why? pub. TESOL Quarterly, Vol 24, No.2 (161-176)

In this article the author discusses the current state of the discussion involving methods in TESOL and whether or not there is an objectively best method. The author notes that what often ends scholarly discussions about what is the best method is the comment that each context will require a slightly different method. But the author counters :

"If the theories of language teaching (that is to say, methods) that we have at present fail to account sufficiently for the diversity in teaching contexts, we ought to try to develop a more general or comprehensive (and probably more abstract) theory to account for more of the diversity, not reject the notion of a single system of ideas and seek to be guided instead by diversity itself. Pointing to a bewildering variety of contextual factors as a means of denying the possibility of a single theory can only be a contribution to bewilderment, not understanding."

The author then goes on to argue for the truth in each individual method contributing to a larger, more theoretical truth, and then argues for a re-envisioning of not only the arguments for the theoretical underpinnings of TESOL methods, but also the validity of the methods themselves.

The class is over, but the posting continues.

I find it interesting that Microsoft Word spellcheck does not allow a pluralization of the word "English".

How does this reflect the cultural attitude toward English?

Week 16 Reading Response

Towards a transformative and empowering teacher education agenda: Revisioning TESOL

SUMMARY

McKay & Bokhorst-Heng Chapter 7: Towards a socially sensitive EIL pedagogy

This chapter was amazing. All throughout the semester we have been talking about the issues and problems surrounding teaching English as a second language. This chapter finally provides some solutions to these problems and issues, while also summarizing the chapters that have come before it. If you could see the annotations I made, you might guess that nearly 50% of the pages have been highlighted with the sole word "Yes!" written next to them. That or a little star. This chapter, I believe, will be largely influential on the ideas that go into my final paper. The authors discuss the varied sociolinguistic contexts in which English can be taught as a second language. They write "A socially sensitive EIL pedagogy would recognize the other languages used by EIL learners, as well as take into account the specific ways in which English is used in their sociolinguistic contexts." (181). They argue that new varieties of English should be viewed "as languages in their own right." (182) and I agree. They are valuable resources that can be used to facilitate the development of the learners' L2 proficiency and linguistic awareness. The authors then discuss repair strategies for conversations between L2 speakers. The authors then problematize the dominant discourse of the ELT materials that occur, while also discussing ways in which local teachers can challenge these discourses. The authors close the chapter with "Principles for a socially sensitive EIL pedagogy", which were all good, in fact great, but I will only close this summary with a quote from the very end of the book which I believe summarizes the authors' message quite well:

"An appropriate EIL pedagogy is one that promotes English bilingualism for learners of all backgrounds, recognizes and validates the variety of Englishes that exist today, and teaches English in a manner that meets local language needs and respects the local culture of learning. It is our hope that by enacting such a pedagogy, EIL educators can mitigate local and global tensions and reduce the Othering that currently exists in EIL pedagogy." -Sandra Lee McKay & Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng

Lin et al. (2002). Appropriating English, expanding identities, and re-visioning the field.

This article used the authors own autobiographies with respect to learning English to critically examine the field of TESOL. The article was broken into four different parts. The first part discussed the kinds of institutional Othering that occurs, particularly in writing styles. English academia often encourages the dismissal of the self in writing. The authors ask then "How should we position ourselves as we are writing this article" (298). The second part is the authors' collective story, which focuses on how the personal, biographical, sociological, and political intersect. Each author provides their own story with relation to English language learning, highlighting different, underexamined aspects of the narrative of ELLs. In the third part of the article, the authors discuss how local knowledge (that is, local agents of English language learning and teaching) influenced the narratives of the authors. They examine ways in which these local agents affected the path of the authors, and then in the final section, the authors discuss the implications these issues have on the field of TESOL. The authors argue that we need to abolish the dichotomized notions of native-nonnative speakers of a language, and instead focus on a more localized conception of teaching English. They argue for a shift from TESOL to TEGCOM. I quote them:

"Our proposal does not consist of merely renaming the field and erasing the previously mentioned dichotic boundaries. We are proposing a rethinking and re-visioning of the field from the perspective of sociocultural situatedness... a parallel decentering of the production of pedagogical knowledge in the discipline needs to happen... the 'good' pedagogy cannot be found without taking socioculturally situated persepctives, and without engaging with issues of agency, identity, appropriation, and resistance of local social actors when they are confronted with the task of learning or using English in their specific local contexts." - Lin et al.

regards,
tfm

Week 15 Reading Response

Globalization and language teaching


SUMMARY

There were two readings for this week's assignment. I unfortunately did not read the first required reading, but instead read the optional reading written by Ryuko Kubota and Sandra McKay. It was titled "Gobalization and Language Learning in Rural Japan: The Role of English in the Local Linguistic Ecology". In the article the authors re-examine the role of English in a local context in a midsized city in Japan with a population of about 160,000 people. The city had an increasing ethnic population, with foreign residents from Brazil, China, Peru, Korea, and Thailand. The authors then examine a few different individuals who have differing language attitudes about the role of English, Japanese, and other foreign languages in their city. The authors then discuss the issues raised by these individuals' attitudes. An interesting point: "attachment to English observed among the learners seems to be influenced by social, cultural, and historical backdrops that reflect symbolic colonialism involving the superiority of English, American culture, and Whiteness."

"It is clear that the spread of English in Japan in the form of increased emphasis on teaching and learning English does not threaten Japanese langauge. Instead, Japanese threatens the maintenance of the heritage language of migrant workers in places like 'Hasu' because of the monolingual/assimilation orientation for newcomers... What is also threatened or undermined seems to be mainstream people's willingness to learn other languages and embrace linguistic and cultural heritage of minorities." - Ryuko Kubota, Sandra McKay

The second reading was by Aya Matsuda and Paul Kei Matsuda and was titled "World Englishes and the Teaching of Writing". In this short article the authors discuss the complexity of the term "English language" and its relation to "World Englishes" or WE. They argue that the pedagogical implications of WE are complex. They state that determining an appropriate target variety of English in expanding circle contexts is difficult. There is a wide variety of contexts in which English will be used for any particular English speaker when you take into account the intranational and international contexts that occur in expanding circle countries. The authors then go on to argue that while these issues apply to speaking, they can also apply to writing, but with different expected norms.

"The impact of the traditional focus on normative features is particularly serious for English, which is one of the most extensively described languages. Although the textbook industry is becoming increasingly aware of issues surrounding WE, the development of specific strategies for addressing language differences is only beginning to happen. The dominance of codified varieties of English is constantly being reified by well--intended teachers and editors who try to help students and authors learn features of standardized written English." - Matsuda and Matsuda, Arizona State University

The authors then end their article with some "principles that can guide teachers who wish to help students negotiate the complex push-pull relationship between standardization and diversification."

They are:

• Teach the Dominant Language Forms and Functions
• Teach the Nondominant Language Forms and Functions
• Teach the Boundary Between What Works and What Does Not
• Teach the Principles and Strategies of Discourse Negotiation
• Teach the Risks Involved in Using Deviational Features

RESPONSE


It was interesting to read the Kubota/McKay article and see that the relative prestige of English and Japanese in Japan was influencing the maintenance of immigrants' first language. It reminds me of attitudes of assimilation in the United States. I suppose this could just be what happens when two languages are used in proximity with one another. One language will take the dominant role. I wonder if this is a colonial or post-colonial notion. But I am also sure that there are situations where two or more languages exist in proximity to each other that hold equal status. Really though, it just seemed to me kind of silly to type that sentence out. I realize that that idea is probably and idealization, and probably won't occur frequently, if at all.


And with the other reading, the Matsuda Matsuda article, it was fascinating to see that all the issues we talked about with teaching the speaking of English also apply to the writing of English. I suppose it is easy for me to forget how critical literacy and the ability to write are, since they have been part of my life since I became a conscious human being. But then also the standards I have been taught and reinforced to abide by, I took all these for granted too. I can't just go around the world being an English teacher teaching these proscriptions all willy-nilly.  I gotta stop and think about what I am teaching, to who am I teaching it to, and how are they going to use it. Will I be equipping them with the tools necessary to achieve the tasks they wish to complete? Or at the very least, equip them with the tools to discover ways in which to complete a task?


I never though ESL would be this complicated. It's good though, because I like a challenge.


Regards,
TfM

Week 14 Reading Response

Language Variation, Language Policies

SUMMARY

There were two readings this week. One was chapter 5 from the McKay Bokhorst-Heng "International English in Its Sociolinguistic Contexts". In this chapter the authors discuss language variation in context, citing pidginization and creolization. The authors discuss features of variation on a number of levels including phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary. The authors then go on to talk about standard language ideology within a particular context. They argue that "the definition of each Standard English should be endonormative (determined locally) rather than exonormative (determined by outside its context of use)." The authors then discuss the issue of intelligibility with regard to English use. They cite two opposing viewpoints: Quirk who argues "for the need to uphold standards in the use of English" and Kachru who argues that "the spread of English had brought with it a need to re-examine traditional notions of codification and standardization". The authors argue that at the core of these opposing viewpoints is the idea of intelligibility.

The second reading was from Rosina Lippie-Green and was called "English with an Accent". In this text Lippie-Green discusses aspects of the ideology that states there is a neutral, accent-less variety of English that could be taught to people. The author problematizes this concept by talking about the metaphor for a Sound House, which is a house built during youth that comprises an accent which is picked up contextually. The author argues that some people are better than others at building a sound house. The author also argues that no one can completely rebuild a sound house, that the phonology we acquire as a child will never be erasable. Pretty interesting stuff.


COMMENT

I really liked both readings from this week. The more I learn, the more I realize that any methodology I choose to teach by will necessarily have to be informed by the desires and goals and aims of the students I teach. My question is, then, do we as TESOL instructors focus on phonology at all? If we do, to what extent should we focus on it? It's seems kind of problematic that L1 phones will interfere with the L2. But, this shouldn't mean that we ignore phonology. But then again, some students could excel at accent adoption or learning. So it should probably be approached on an individual basis.

As for the debate between a monolithic standard of English versus multiple world-English dialects, I would have to fall with Kachru. I would rather challenge the concept of a standard world English. I think learning a variety of English is a good thing, as long as the students understand the general differences between the English variety they know and the standards of English that they will be expected to know in the context that they hope to enter by learning English. This, though, is another problematic notion. Perhaps there will be students in my classroom that do not need to learn any variety English. Perhaps they are content knowing their first language, while their government demands that they learn English. Why is this the case? Why should students have to learn STANDARD ENGLISH? Why can't we also legitimate the varieties they also know, while educating them on the differences between their varieties and the ones we wish to teach?

Am I on the right track?

I don't know.

TfM

Week 13 Reading Response

SUMMARY

The readings this week focused on Language planning and policy and how these are highly influenced by the language ideology of a culture.

The first reading was from Sandra McKay and Wendy Bokhorst-Heng. It was the fourth chapter from "International English in Its Sociolinguistic Contexts". In this chapter the authors discuss the interplay between language policy and language planning. The authors discuss how these policies and plans interfere with how language is taught in the classroom. They use a number of different case studies to examine different aspects of how language politics influences language learners. The discussion about Singapore involves the Speak Good English Movement (SGEM), where politician decided that the non-standard form of English known as "Singlish" in Singapore was to be removed.The goal was to get Singaporeans to turn away from Singlish and begin speaking Standard Singaporean English. The motivation for this change comes from the idea that it would be economically advantageous to speak a form of English that the rest of the world can understand. Closely linked with this attitude is the idea of a standard world English, which is a problematic notion because internationally English has taken on many forms and the idea that there is one standard is very misled. The other part of this chapter dealt with attitudes and policies of English in the United States. The authors discuss the English-only movement and move on to discuss the impact these attitudes have had on bilingual education in parts of the US. Lastly the authors examine the role of English policies and language ideologies in Expanding and Outer circle countries such as China and South Korea.

The other reading for this week was Farr and Song's 2011 "Language Ideologies and Policies: Multilingualism and Education". In it the authors discuss the concept of standardization in the Western world and how that has influenced the language ideologies and policies toward English in the rest of the world. The concept of one standard English.The article describes how language ideology arose, and further how this ideology influences language policy. Summed up, perhaps, the authors write

"Language policies, then, are ideological constructs that reflect and reproduce power differentials within a society (McCarty 2004)... a English-only policy adopted for the schooling of students whose multilingual realities challenge the notion of a monolingual standard not only deprives such students of learning opportunities, including developing (and becoming literate in) their home languages, but it also furthers an ideology of contempt toward subordinate languages and dialects" (6).

COMMENT

I was really surprised to hear that some TESOL teachers were fining students for using their native language in the classroom. This to me is an egregious offense. I do not hold the opinion that ESL classrooms should be English only. It is a really delicate line to toe, though. I think native languages should be used in the cases where their use will benefit or aid learning of the second language. If a concept needs to be explained in their native language, then let that be so. Closely linked with this is the idea of native language maintenance, which I also believe is a good thing. I think studies have shown that greater skill in the first language can transfer to greater skill in the second language. Also, first or native languages are a large part of the identity of the language learner, and to dismiss this aspect of their identity is to deny a large part of who they understand and represent themselves to be. Well, this is likely the case, not always the case. So when a teacher fines students for using their first or native language in an ESL classroom, what is that saying? It says "You're first language is not valued here...." (Where here is arguably a microcosm of portions of the larger English speaking world that presumably these language learners want to become part of. I think the practice is really discouraging to students and should definitely be avoided. It might be interesting to reverse it the fine and do some sort of positive reinforcement for the students. For example, everytime someone answers a question correctly (or something to this effect) I will put a nickel in a jar. At the end of the semester we as a class will decide what to do collectively with the money. I don't know, its just a thought.

Regards,
TfM

Week 12 reading response

Reading Response

Chapters 2 and 3 of "International English in Its Sociolinguistic Contexts" by Sandra Kee McKay and Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng

Chapter 2

This chapter discussed the social contexts for English as an International Language learning. The authors use the frame of Kachru's concentric circle theory to discuss the context of EIL education in different contexts across the globe. The authors acknowledge the limitations of Kachru's theory to accurately describe the actual situation in these countries, but they note that it is an easier way of looking at the situations. The authors then go through some examples of Inner Circle, Outer Circle, and Expanding Circle countries and describes some aspects of the language learning environments in these countries. The authors discussed critically developed pedagogical approaches to education in each of these environments.

Chapter 3

This chapter discussed the issue of diglossia in multilingual societies. In particular the authors focused on South Africa and India, and examined the aspects of multilingualism within the countries. The authors discuss the differences in the aspects of EIL with diglossia as compared to EIL without diglossia. The authors point out that maintaining the use of the mother tongue in the classroom will ultimately be beneficial for ELLs. "Studies... consistently show that children in bilingual programs outperform their counterparts in all-English programs on tests of academic achievement in English."


RESPONSE

I am not sure if I've commented on this before butI think this class has been giving me an existential crisis. A year ago I would have had no issues saying that I want to be an ESL teacher abroad, but now I am not so sure. This class has made me rethink my position of wanting to be an ESL teacher. It's a lot more complicated than I thought. Like, my motivation for making this decision was that I wanted to help people while also traveling the world. I thought I would make a good ESL teacher because I am a native speaker of English, with an above average education. But these readings have made me feel guilty for thinking this way, and also for wanting to do what I want to do. I just looked and I did post about this two weeks ago. Yes, it is still bothering me, and I am not sure if I will find an answer.

Perhaps I should talk to Dr. Seloni for encouragement or advice on how to cope with these feelings.

TfM

Week 10 Reading Response

Week 10: Race, language, and identity: Critical multiculturalism in TESOL


SUMMARY:

The first reading for this week was written by Awad Ibrahim. The title is "Becoming Black: Rap and Hip-Hop, Race, Gender, Identity, and the Politics of ESL Learning". The article focuses on the impact that a social imaginary has on ESL learners in a community. Ibrahim examined the effect that Black Stylized English had on a group of refugee status immigrants within the context of an urban, French-Language high school in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Ibrahim defines BSE as well as how it relates to hip-hop culture. Ibrahim explains his involvement with the school as well, which went beyond the researcher/participant dichotomy. The author conducted individual interviews as well as two focus-group interview sessions. Finally, from his data, Ibrahim discussed how particular individuals perceived themselves in relation to the community they had emigrated to. The author also discussed how this perception influenced their acclimatization to the English-speaking community.


The second reading was a selection from Ryuko Kubota and Angel Lin's book "Race, Culture, and Identities in Second Language Education". The selection was the first chapter of the book and is meants to be an introduction to research and practice. In this section, the authors attempt to define race and culture with respect to TESOL, as well as present some theoretical backgrounds for the understanding of race or ethnicity within the field of TESOL. The authors also invoked Bordieu's concepts of habitus and cultural capital. The authors provide some inquiry themes for  second language education, which problematizes the concept of race within the TESOL classroom as well as examines some of the manifestations of biases within these contexts.


The last reading was "Hard Times: Arab TESOL Students' Experiences of Racialization and Othering in the United Kingdom" by Sarah Rich and Salah Troudi. This article was published in TESOL Quarterly and was included in the brief reports and summaries. As the authors write "The study sought to address the following research question: How far and in what ways do Arab Muslim students perceive racialization to be significant to their experiences of Othering in a TESOL community in the United Kingdom?" The participants were all graduate-level TESOL students at a UK university. The authors discuss two aspects of racism perceived by the participants, which were categorized as such: Othering based on Non-racial categories, and accounts of Othering based on racism. Understanding the limitations of this study being so brief, the authors suggested that it be used as a stepping-stone for further inquiry into racialization with respect to TESOL pedagogy and practitions.


REFLECTIONS:

I really enjoyed all the articles we were to read this week. In particular, the Ibrahim and the Rich & Troudi. It was fascinating to hear the stories of others who have experienced racism. As a white male from a middle-class background, I feel as though I have not experienced much otherization within my lifetime. So I feel as though it is important for me to hear these stories, and that seemed to be one of the cruxes of the readings (and of this class), that we (all) should attempt to experience and hear and understand the experiences of those different from ourselves. Empathy, man, what gives?

On a more serious note, it was at some point in the Kubota and Lin reading that I began to feel guilty about my decision to become a TESOL pedagog. It's hard to communicate, but when they started talking about attitudes toward the idea that native speakers should be the ones to teach English, I began to feel it, the guilt. The authors basically encouraged me to step back and examine the choices I've made in my life, and basically question the things I understood about myself and what I wanted to do as a career choice. It was very troubling to me. I wish I could communicate it more clearly. I'll have to look for the section again and examine the emotions it evoked last night.


Further Questions:

1. How does one broach the concept of race or ethnicity in an ESL classroom without allowing the conversation to devolve into white people talk like this, black people talk like this? (I have a feeling that this may be a loaded question, with a not so clear and straight-forward answer)

2. Can we ever talk about race too much?



Regards,
TfM

Week 8 Reading Response

Cultural Representions: Culture and Teaching Materials

SUMMARY:

Holliday et. al; A 3.1 and 3.2

Section A 3.1 discussed the the problems that media representations create with respect to intercultural communication. The authors provide us with a vignette of a Canadian teacher struggling with communicating with a refugee as a result of her perception of him being tainted by both media and professional images. The authors recommend that an individual "bracket popular representations" and rather 1. "be aware of the media, political, and institutional on our own society which lead us to see people from other cultural backgrounds in a certain way" and "See through these images and fictions when we encounter people from other cultural backgrounds, and always try to consider alternative representations."

Section A 3.2 deconstructed some real-life examples of essentialization and otherization. The authors talk about how "dominant discourses can be so naturalized that people become unaware of them". Essentialism ties very much into this notion as well. The authors suggest that we should:

"Be aware of dominant discourses which are easily perpetuated by the media, and which lead us to think-as-usual that familiar images of the foreign Other are normal."

"Be aware that even images projected by sensitive, intellectual sources can seduce our own sensitivities and intellects into thinking they are true."

Lastly the authors mention about sensationalism:

"Although sensationalism in the media is something we know about and guard against, we need to appreciate how deeply it exists in our traditional views of the foreign Other."


Holliday et al; B 3.2 and B 3.3


Section B 3.2 discusses social constructionism and social representations. The authors explain that our perceptions of the world might be said to be socially constructed. They state that social representations have an historical dimension. There are four key assumptions, according to the authors, they are:

1. A critical stance towards taken-for-granted knowledge
2. Historical and cultural specificity
3. Knowledge is sustained by social processes
4. Knowledge and social action go together

The authors finally explain in this section how to interpret and explain cultural representations.

Section B 3.3 examines representations in the media. Particularly, how these representations can be misleading for a multitude of reasons. Noam Chomsky argues that the news media provides us with 'a very narrow, very tightly constrained and grotesquely inaccurate account of the world in which we live'. Through the texts in this section, numerous authors critically challenge media discourse as being essentializing in nature.


Tyer-Mendes 2010: Construction of racial stereotypes in EFL textbooks

This article discussed the problems surrounding sample images used in EFL text books. The author researched EFL teacher and student attitudes toward images used in EFL textbooks. The responses were surprising to the researchers. They found that the subjects were responsive to the power-imbalance issues implied through the use of these images. The subjects articulated what the researchers were suggesting about the images. Finally, the researchers suggested ways of encouraging educators and students to critically think about the images presented in textbooks, and try to problematize the implications of these photos.

RESPONSE

These readings were interesting because they take another aspect of intercultural communications and critically dissect how these aspects (Media and professional images, textbook images) influence our perceptions of cultures different from our own. You never really think about where your ideas about those from different cultures come from. Sometimes, its from conversations you have with others (but you need to remind yourself that an individual does NOT represent the culture group you associate them with), and more often, it is from the media that we get our preconceived notions about different cultures. We often let the rhetoric of these discourses influence our notions of other cultures. Some times we don't even notice or are aware of the influence. This is especially problematic because we take these assumptions for granted. For example, an individual might think that a Mexican's favorite food is tacos (or nachos).  Where does this notion come from? It is hard to say. But for an EFL learner, it might be even more difficult to decide what to believe, especially if they are not thinking critically about the typical assumptions we make in intercultural discourse. We, as future educators, have a responsibility to encourage critical thinking skills about the images and representations that the media portrays to us.

Week 6 reading response: Kubota and Connor

SUMMARY

Ulla Connor - Changing currents in contrastive rhetoric

This chapter discussed the the history and implications of contrastive rhetoric. Connor writes "The underlying premise of the field is that any given language is likely to have written texts that are constructed using identifiable discourse features". Connor takes us through a history of Contrastive Rhetoric, beginning with Kaplan's influential "doodle" paper, wherein Connor explains Kaplan's original insights regarding the rhetoric of different cultures. Contrastive rhetoric has now gorwn into an interdisciplinary domain of second language acquisition with rich theoretical underpinnings in both linguistics and rhetoric. Connor then talks about applications of contrastive rhetoric in EFL situations. Connor then addresses some criticisms of contrastive rhetoric. One of the issues with contrastive rhetoric is that it presents individuals of a culture as being subject to the rhetorical devices of their first, native, or dominant language. Another issue is culture is a fluid and ever-changing thing. This means that it would be difficult to assert what the rhetorical conventions of a language are, since they could be and likely are in flux most of the time. Connor then concludes the chapter by summarizing the current state of contrastive rhetoric, and suggesting what the future holds for contrastive rhetoric.

Ryuko Kubota - Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses

This article from the TESOL Quarterly discusses Japanese culture identities as view through a dichotomous relationship of East vs. West. Kubota argues that this is a problematic binary. Kubota writes "This article takes Japanese culture as an example, and after summarizing the characterizations of Japanese culture that appear in the applied linguistics literature, critiques the essentialized representations of culture found in discussions of teaching writing and critical thinking to ESL students. It also attempts to come to terms with the pedagogical tension between acculturation and pluralist approaches... Second, I point out that the Other adopts cultural distinctiveness, manifesting a struggle for power in Westernization, as is evident in the discourse of the uniqueness of Japanese culture that has been promoted in Japan since the 1960s. Third, I present an emerging body of research on Japanese schooling as counterknowledge that is generating a new understanding of culture in Japanese education. Finally this article discusses (a) a perspective of critical multiculturalism as a way of understanding cultural differences in educational contexts and (b) implications for L2 teaching from a view of critical literacy." In a later section Kubota discusses pedagogical issues relating to approaches in teaching culture and language. Kubota presents three models: The acculturation model, the pluralist model, and critical multiculturalism. She then has a section regarding dominant codes, and discusses the power struggle between languages of high and low prestige, and how to be more conscious of the issues that may arise from said power inequality.

Ryuko Kubota - Unfinished Knowledge: The Story of Barbara

This was an interesting text. It basically did in narrative what the two aforementioned articles did in demonstrating the historical currents of contrastive rhetoric. It was easy to follow and very informative.It was an interesting alternative approach to informative writing.


REFLECTIONS

I was first introduced to contrastive rhetoric at community college in a Women's Literature class. I can't remember what the instructors point was, but I think perhaps it was that different cultures think differently, or rather that individuals think differently and will approach communication in different ways. I remember that she showed us the Kaplan doodles specifically. She was probably priming our pumps for alternative viewpoints and narratives. The whole thing kind of reminds me of the joke "White people talk like this..." and "Black people talk like this...", which only supports the concept of essentialism, unfortunately.

I guess before that and since then I haven't much considered or entertained the idea that individuals from other cultures will approach communication differently. I feel like contrastive rhetoric is an off-shoot of discourse analytics, but in a different form. I suppose we're all kind of familiar with the notion that people approach communication in different ways, and that misunderstandings typically arise from a lack of understanding between interlocutors. So I see how it is important for us as future educators of English as a second language to be cognizant about these issues that will inevitably arise with teaching the rhetorical stylings of English. It is a delicate balance between helping students maintain their identity and voice while also successfully using the rhetorical strategies and devices of their L2.

On a semi-related note, I asked someone on facebook today to "not reduce me to a single aspect of my identity". He told me I should like spicy food because I'm a Mexican.

FURTHER QUESTIONS

1. Is anyone else becoming really, really hyper-critical of the conversations they have with others?

2. Why isn't there more of an emphasis placed on educating people about this stuff earlier in life? It seems like this knowledge would be valuable to more than just future ESL teachers.

Week Four Reading Response

SUMMARY

Holliday et al.

Intercultural Communication

Unit B1.3 Discourse and Identity

    In this section Holliday et al discusses "how far people's identities are bound up with how the speak and write, and all the contextual factors that go together with how they speak and write" (101). The authors make the claim that, according to Stephenson, "Our sense of self is acheived through our capacity to conceive of our own lives as a unity and this in turn is a result of our capacity to tell the story of our lives" (101). This section discusses how people take on particular perspectives when talking about what the world is like. This idea is attributed to James Gee, and it involves "us taking perspectives on what is 'normal' and not." (101). The first text from this unit comes from A. De Fina and is titled "Group identity, narrative and self-representations". In this text De Fina argues that "people do not possess one identity related to the social categories to which they belong, but rather they present and re-present themselves, choosing within an inventory of more or less compatible identities that intersect and/or contrast with each other indifferent ways and in accordance with changing social circumstances and interlocutors" (102). This is basically arguing that a person consists of multiple intersecting cultural identities from which the given individual is able to pick and choose from these identities how to represent oneself in differing situations. The communities from which a person comes is referred to as a discourse, an idea which James Gee promotes heavily over the idea of the hard-to-define 'culture'.


"I am not a big fan of the word "culture"-- too many meanings and gets us sometimes to think at too large a scale and miss important intergroup differences. I am more a fan of Discourses in the sense of socially recognisable identities and activities." -James Gee, 2008

    The other reading from Unit B1.3 comes from Gee. It is an excerpt from "An Introduction to Discourse Analysis". Gee establishes what a discourse community is over the idea of a culture. He writes "The key to Discourses is recognition" and "It is sometimes helpful to think about social and political issues as if it is not just us humans who are talking and interacting with each other, but rather, the Discourses we represent and enact, and for which we are 'carriers'"(106).

Unit B1.4 Discourse, Identity, and Intercultural Communication

    We are presented with two texts in this section. The first is written by Scollon and Wong Scollon. The title is "Discourse and intercultural communication". The authors discuss and elaborate on the Gee position towards culture and discourse community. These authors also mention the concept of a mediated discourse perspective, which "shifts from a focus on the individuals involved in communication... to a focus on mediated action as a kind of social action" (111). The next text in Unit B1.4 is from Roberts and Sarangi and provides us with some discourse analysis of some medical encounters. This section builds upon and applies Gee's theory of Discourse.

Unit B1.5 Identity and Language Learning

    In this section Holliday et al present information on how an individual's identity is shaped by the acquisition of a second language. We are presented with two texts: Pellegrino Aveni's "Study Abroad and Second Language Use" and Pavlenko and Lantolf's "Second language learning as participation and the (re)construction of selves". These articles discuss what it is that happens to a person's identity through the process of acquiring a second language.

K. Hall, Language and Identity Ch. 2

    In this chapter the author Hall discusses what goes into making a person's social and linguistic identity. There were some really good definitions of some terms used so far in class that I particularly enjoyed, which I will share here:

"Social identity encompasses partcipant rules, positions, relationships, reputations, and other dimensions of social personae, which are conventionally linked to epistemic and affective stances." - Elinor Ochs, 1996
"[habitus] is a set of bodily dispositions acquired through extended engagement in our everyday activities that dispose us to act in certain ways. We bring them with us to our social experiences, and are inclined to make sense of our experiences, and coordinate our actions with others in particular ways. It is through or lived experiences as individual actors by which our habitus is continually being reconstructed."

    Hall also talks about how context is important for discussing a person's identity.

Quote: "[Individual identity is] the situated 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." -Richard Bauman, 2000

B. Norton Pierce, "Social Identity, Investment, and Language Learning"

    This article attempts to argue that "SLA theorists have not developed a comprehensive theory of social identity that integrates the language learner and the language learning context." Furthermore, "This theory of social identity... assumes power relations play a crucial role in social interactions between language learners and target language speakers." The article offers multiple analysis of real life data and ends with some implications and objectives to be striven toward in the classroom and/or target language conversation contexts.


REFLECTIONS/CRITIQUE

    Okay, so this stuff is starting to make more sense to me. Once you become accustomed to the register of Intercultural Communication language, I guess things just start clicking. It really helps to connect this stuff with my own personal experiences with SLA and the identity that arose out of those situations. The trouble is that I don't have an environment in which I can submerse myself in the target language. But none-the-less, I can still make connections. I particularly enjoyed the Hall chapter on language and identity as well as Units B1.3 and B1.4 in the Holliday text. The emphasis on how a person conveys their cultural identity speaks to me. I enjoy the approach of Gee's discourse analytics, rather than the traditional view of intercultural communication (that miscommunication arises out of cultural differences, I think?). The notion that identity is something that is projected and re-projected is fascinating. We all have experiences of people doing this. I have a friend who has a black friend that the original friend claims can pass between registers and styles. As my friend puts it, "He can talk like a black person and like a white person when he wants to." My friend is impressed by this fact,  but I think many of us do this every day. Identity is somewhat shaped by the individuals perception of how the interlocutor perceives the individual. This is kind of convoluted, I think. I suppose what dawns on me now is that a lot more goes into communication than just words.

FURTHER QUESTIONS

1. How does linguistic determinism (the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) factor into Intercultural Communication, especially with regard to cultural identity projections of self?
2. Who is Foucault?
3. Is it possible to be lacking in cultural identity? i.e. to not have a discourse community to hail from. This is impossible, right?

Regards,
TfM

Week 3 Reading Response

Summary

    The first reading for this week came from Intercultural Communication by Holliday et al. The readings focused predominantly on the formation and projection of identity within intercultural communications. Section A1.1 discusses the example of an Iranian woman named Parisa who struggles to establish her own identity w/r/t her heritage. The focus here was on the multi-facetedness of other people and societies as well as the way people talk. The authors explain in this section the concept of thick description, which is "deriving meaning from a broad view of social phenomena which pieces together different, interconnected perspectives" (Holliday 9).
    The next section, A1.2, is entitled Cultural Artefacts. As the authors write, "This unit continues to unravel the complexities of cultural identity by looking at what might lie behind what people say about their culture." The authors use the example of Ming, Zhang, and Janet to help explain some ideas. In the deconstruction section the authors write

    -When people are in a difficult, strange environment, they can close ranks and exaggerate specific aspects of their cultural identity
    -Different cultural resources can be drawn upon and invoked at different times depending on the circumstances.

and importantly: "What people say about their cultural identity should be read as the image they wish to project at a particular time rather than as evidence of an essentialist national culture." or "Take what people say about their own culture as a personal observation which should not be generalized to other people who come from the same background."

    The next section, A1.3, discusses what one says about their cultural identity when they exchange information with another person. The authors use the example of the girls on the bus who cuss. They raise the issue that there are two sides to identity, the inherited cultural identities and the creative cultural identities, the former which is traditional and presupposed and the latter which is more free-form and playful. The authors remind us at the end of this section, "Appreciate that we are creating and negotiation our own cultural identity in the process of communicating with others" and "appreciate that the creation and negotiation of cultural and personal identity are the same thing."

    The next section is unit B1.1 entitled Identity as a Personal Project. The sample text from this section is written by J.R. Ribeyro and it details how a Peruvian culturally bleaches himself to be more Americanized. There is another text in this section written by Giddens entitled Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in  the Late Modern Age. Here are some key assumptions pointed out by the authors:

1. A person is someone with a self-contained mind and consciousness: a unique individual who is separate and distinct from other people.

2. Each individual has one personality or a consistent set of traits, characteristics, preferences, or abilities which sum up that person's true nature...

3. People own their thoughts and feelings. These are private, self-generated and organized within the inner self. Thoughts, feelings and internal states can, however, be expressed publicly through language, actions and through other symbolic means.

4. People... are the centre and source of their experience. Individuals initiate action and try to realize themselves (their plans, beliefs, desires) in the world.

    In the last section assigned from the book, B1.2, we read a piece called "Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket" by G. Matthews. In it, Matthews builds a metaphor in which cultures exist within a supermarket of sorts where individuals can pick and choose which culture they would like to be a part of, given that the individual has the ability to learn about those cultures.

    Last but not least, we read an article by A. Pavlenko which analyzed the linguistic trends that occurred within memoirs of immigrants to the United States during the early 20th century.

Reflections

    I have been enjoying the readings immensely thus far. I know I touched on this in class briefly, but I think I have been "on to" the non-essentialist view of culture for some time. From a young age I felt as though I didn't quite fit in with any particular culture, seeing many. You know how middle school, high school, and even elementary school are pretty clique-y with regard to social structures. Well I never liked the concept of those cliques, and as I grew older I came to realize that while I didn't belong, per se, to any group, I could go between them with relative ease as a result of my non-committal to any particular group. I was kind of like an individual in the supermarket described by Matthews, wandering down the aisles and picking and grabbing what I choose.
    The supermarket of culture concept also reminds me of another philosophy I have learned about in a former class. It's the idea of henotheism. As explained by Max Muller, henotheism the idea that God is as God manifests himself to you, that is, you come to know God as God comes to reveal himself to you through the world. I kind of would like to extend this idea to culture in the individual, that culture is as culture reveals itself to you. The idea that you cannot know or be a part of a culture unless that culture has manifested itself to you in the "supermarket of cultures". I don't know. These are just the connections I make.

Further Questions

    Why did all of the literature avoid the concept of how a name comes to shape your identity?

    What do we do in the EFL/ESL classroom w/r/t names of students? Should we give them English names?
    In what ways can we become more aware of our essentialist bias through which we view the world?


Regards,
TfM
  

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Yrs truly,
TfM