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