Tuesday, April 5, 2011
what does "native-like" mean?
I have to admit that I found this week's readings somewhat confusing. I gathered that they were in opposition to what we've been reading, and that they were suggesting a new, more theoretical and methodological balance, but I quite honestly don't understand what that means in practice. However, what I did draw from the readings, especially from the first reading, was very interesting to me. I felt like the researchers were saying, "we are studying second language learners, starting with the assumption that none of them are/will be successful." It was a somewhat discouraging thought! I realized they had a point - it was almost like they were saying, "we need to give second langauge learners the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are actually successful, or well on their way to success, and we are discounting the value of their language skills simply because they are a second language learner". I can see where terms such as "interlanguage" are perhaps oversimplified in an attempt to describe the language of all learners, when in reality, language is something that is different for every learner and probably cannot be easily generalized. While I understand their point, I can see why research has, perhaps unintentionally, begun from the standpoint that second language learners are inferior. The researchers we have studied HAVE elevated native speakers over non-native speakers in terms of mastery of the language, and perhaps with good reason: non-native speakers are, after all, attempting to acquire a language differently than they acquired a language as a child and that in itself brings up all kinds of questions about the nature of second language acquistion. I finally decided that perhaps the way the article makes the most sense to me is that we're not really sure who qualifies as a native speaker. Because language is so relative, so individual, it is hard to define "native speaker". Or, better put, it is hard to define "native-like" speech. To whom are comparing second language learners to determine the "nativeness" of their speaking? Perhaps this is not where the article is going at all, but that is what it made me think of. What does "native-like" mean? I would like to think I know, but I don't think I do.
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At what point does a non-native speaker become native-like? I feel your struggle because I think it'd be a lot simpler to just put a label on it and then go into a predetermined list of methods and tools to teach and fix it, but, especially in rural areas or areas without formal instruction, how do we negotiate and value interactions that aren't the standard variety? Every learner is different and no two learners acquire language in the same order/way, so why do we have benchmarks of proficiency and list that strategically detail out specific grammatical and pragmatic knowledge at each level as the "bar" in determining proficiency? What happens when a learner reaches native-like speech? Does that mean that he or she is done learning a language and can learn no more? I found this hard to explain after this weeks readings because when you look at the student as an individual who may have advanced English language proficiency, there is always something small or similar that would technically label them as still acquiring language, but pragmatically, they are native-like in speech because within their community they are understood and fluent.
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