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
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