sharing words

Language is a beautiful thing that has the potential to be a unifying factor, in my opinion. It allows people to discuss, relate, express themselves, and learn about others. In the article we read this week by Toohey, however, words seemed to be a source of contention; an "item" only to be borrowed with limitations, if at all; something possessed by only an elect group of people.

The first grade classroom described by Toohey in the article was problematic in many regards, but her quote that interested me most was found on page 20. She writes, "Learners of English in this classroom, as they were discouraged from explicit appropriation of others' words, were taught that words, like things, were individually owned and not community resources". Indeed, many of the actions of Ms. Jones, the teacher, point to this as true. The teacher creates an environment in which education is extremely individualized. The students sit at their own desks, use their own supplies, do their own work, and seem to produce and exchange information only in very structured settings. Ms. Jones operates her classroom in this manner under the explanation, or excuse perhaps, that it is necessary for classroom management. However, her seating-assignment techniques and her conversations and classroom operations seem to suggest that perhaps she has some personal reasons for this as well. She seems to, perhaps unknowingly, discourage inter-cultural interaction. It almost seemed to me as though children began borrowing and sharing things from one another in search of either 1) power/"reflecting social allegiance", 2) social acceptance, or 3) interaction. One student borrowed Luke's ruler and then lied to him and told him he got it from the store. That's power. Another student, Surjeet, repeated the phrase "a million" after another student when asked a question by the teacher. That's searching for social acceptance. Amy allows others to borrow her items freely and roams often to chat with or borrow things from other students. That's a desire for interaction. Unfortunately, Ms. Jones seems to assume that when students borrow things from one another, or use one another's ideas, or learn together, or work collaboratively, that they are only doing so with ulterior motives - with intentions to hurt another student or to "copy" or to decrease his/her own work load. She does not seem to consider the fact that working together and sharing words and ideas can be a valuable educational and language-related skill that she is denying these students by sentencing them to their desks in every regard. The effects of her limited view are realized and expressed best in the short example given about Julie: "Indeed, Julie was very quiet in the classroom that year, although, as in kindergarten, she continued to appear lively, socially active, and verbal on the playground". The children in this first grade classroom are being suppressed by being denied the opportunity to share, exchange, and use language together.

On an unrelated topic, I also found the following quote in the Wong textbook very fascinating: "Adopted children from Korea and China may feel put on the spot if a teacher assumes from their appearance that they are knowledgeable about the countries in which they were born (particularly if assumptions are made that these students can serve as translators for ESL children). Dialogic pedagogy looks at the insider/outsider question in terms of community, recognizing that membership in a community is both forged and fluid. It has more to do with lived experiences, commitment, and involvement than racial appearance."

I know several families have adopted in the recent past, or are currently in the process of adopting, children from Ethiopia. I see this as being a parenting challenge in their future, and it has given me an interesting perspective on education and raising children who are not your own. In an educational environment that needs to be designed, structured, and fulfilled like a community, there is no place for assumptions or personal prejudices. Dialogue is necessary and sharing words is not optional. When we can share words, we can form this community that is so sought-after by current educators.

"it depends..."

I don't know how many times I've heard (and used!) the phrase "it depends..." to respond to questions concerning second language acquisition. There are so many factors affecting a person's ability to learn a second langauge that it often becomes impossible to make broad generalizations. In this week's reading, the following paragraph from Pierce really stood out to me (actually, I just found her entire article fascinating, but in summary...):

"If learners invest in a second language, they do so with the understanding that they will acquire a wider range of symbolic and material resources [...] The notion of investment attempts to capture the relationship of the language learner to the changing social world [...] The notion presupposes that when language learners speak, they are not only exchanging information with target language speakers but they are constantly organizing and reorganizing a sense of who they are and how they relate to the social world. Thus an investment in the target language is also an investment in a learner's own social identity - an identity that is constantly changing across space and time".

Pierce goes on to say that "a language learner's motivation to speak is mediated by investments that may conflict with the desire to speak", and this is the part of her article that was the most interesting to me. In the examples she cited, and in my real life experience, it is so interesting to me how much language learning is affected by both internal and external motivations, and how language learning suffers with those motivations are in conflict with one another. As she explains, language is so much a part of "self" that it often suffers when "self" suffers and vice versa.

Pierce explains that language is very tied to social identity, and this makes it a very vulnerable aspect of a person's being. We often make associations with certain languages in certain parts of our lives. For example, we may use a particular language in a particular context for for a particular purpose. If that context or purpose becomes insecure or instable, a person's desire to learn and use the language associated with it may decrease or be completely eliminated.

So, back to my original title... it depends. A person may have a stellar constellation (as Norton and Toohey term it) of personality characteristics and language-learning traits and history, but if the language they are learning represents insecurity or inferiority, their desire to continue to learn may be compromised. One cannot make the generalization that, for example, an extroverted person is a good langauge learner (although they may well be, because they may seek out more opportunities to speak) because their loyalty to another power or motivation that they have may conflict with their ability and desire to continue to learn the second language. So, it depends.

[disclaimer: this post was much longer and much better until I hit "post" and it erased it all... sigh.]

second languages

Until Chapter 5 of the Saville-Troike text, no distinction was made between the "type" of second language being learned - the text focused on "second language" acquisition as a whole. In the discussion of the microsocial context of language learning, however, Saville-Troike introduces three different types of second language. A "second language" is a language used in a community among native speakers. A "foreign language" is a language learned in the context of one's own culture, with no interaction with native speakers unless one chooses to study abroad for a period of time. An "auxiliary language" is a language learned for political or technological functions.

I teach at the English Language Institute and my students are learning English as their second language. Most of them desire to become conversationally fluent, at the very least, although many of them also have academic goals and wish to attend a University in the United States. Because of my interactions with these students, the following paragraph on "foreigner talk" really interested me. Saville-Troike states:

"Some of the linguistic modifications appear to aid comprehension and early stages of learning: ex. high frequency phrase may be memorized as chunks of speech which can be processed automatically, pauses at appropriate grammatical junctures can help listeners recognize constituent structures; a slower rate of speech allows more time for information retrieval and controlled processing, and topicalization helps in identifying what a sentence is about and what part of it contains new information. On the other hand, the common practice of speaking louder to an L2 learner probably does no good at all, and "simplification" of sentence structure may actually impair comprehension to the extent that it reduces redundancy" (107).

Just in this one paragraph, I learned several things that will help me be a better teacher to my students. First of all, it is important to be consistent in what I say - use the same phrases and pause to emphasize important grammar concepts that I may sometimes say without even thinking about it. Also, if my students are giving me feedback that says they do not understand what I'm saying, I often tend to simplify to aid their comprehension, but Saville-Troike explains here that that may not actually help, because it usually means you're saying less and perhaps being less explicit. I had never thought of that before and I think it will help me in my interactions with my students.

The chapters in both Saville-Troike and the Lightbrown & Spada were also very encouraging for older L2 learners. As I looked at the chart describing the advantages and disadvantages of L2 learning for younger and older students, I realized that I know many successful second language learners - the students I work with, my Spanish professors, missionaries that I know... there are so many people who began their L2 education at a time that would be considered "too late" according to the Critical Period Hypothesis but who can actually navigate the language very well. Our efforts to teach and to learn are not futile! It's very encouraging.