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
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