Wrongful Assumptions

           In both the text reading and in the article, I was prompted to think about diversity beyond what I have before. In the article, in reference to Surjeet, the young Indian girl, and the troubles she had communicating with some of her peers. This researcher observed that although there were two girls she talked to most of the time, that one was a less-pressure situation, with Tiffany, where as the other girl tended to respond negatively to Surjeet’s attempts at conversation, Mary. In once instance, the researcher heard Mary say to Tiffany, “don’t go to Surjeet’s birthday, it would be Indian smell.” Tiffany agrees not to go, but Mary says to come to her own party because she is Irish. Tiffany again agrees. Sujeet heard the conversation and was obviously hurt by it. These are first graders. Did they devise these prejudices on their own? Did they learn them from their parents? I hope that they did not learn them from their class environment. It is vital that we as educators work to address and conquer these prejudices. One thing I know I want to teach in my classroom is to not make assumptions. So often, prejudices are based on learned assumptions, which are incorrect most of the time. What I had never considered before, was the content of the textbook.

            It is so interesting to me that the gay priest was a visitor to the classroom, and that the students did not deduce that the priest was gay. They assumed that since he was a priest, a good man and nicely dressed that he was not gay. Again, these are all incorrect assumptions and very generalizing. At first glance I did not understand why the textbook was using this as an example of why visitors should come to the classroom. Making me think about it though, really pushed my limits. What I mean is that at first I was a bit defensive. I thought, “why would they be talking about this when the students are from a Christian organization?” I just thought I was contradictory. As I continued reading though, I understood how the teacher used it not only as a way to address and conquer diversity and preconceived assumptions, but also as a learning opportunity. The students had to prepare for the visitors to come, introduce them, have questions for them etc. For ELL’s this is a great way to practice the language and gain confidence in their own abilities. Pairing this with the opportunity to discuss the diversity that these students had never recognized before developed, in my opinion, a fruitful discussion. As I read of their unfamiliarity of homosexuality in their culture, that was so sheltered that they did not even think to deduce the priest as being gay, I was reminded of my own assumptions I make everyday. I made assumptions as I started reading the text. I make assumptions about different cultures all the time. I do not necessarily know where they all come from, but they are probably a compilation of what I have heard, been exposed to, and come to my own conclusions on.

            So what does this mean for me as a future educator? It has been brought to my attention that I will need to work hard and monitor myself closely in order to prevent any wrongful assumptions in my classroom. Despite the fact that my own assumptions are mostly sub-conscious, I absolutely do not want to portray or pass them on to my students. I need to address and conquer my own prejudices and assumptions, so that eventually I can set an example for my students to look to.

Political And Philosophical Roots of TESOL

      This chapter was a very interesting tie-in to what we have been learning in class. The first thing that interested me in this chapter was the history of TESOL methods. It was interesting to see in more of a chronological order, how the different approaches and methods came about and what time periods they were most prevalent in.
      A quote from this section in the chapter I really like was "learning English is a one-way door: Outsiders come in but insiders less often venture out." I believe this pinpoints the attitude and reality in America today. Many natural born American citizens believe that if you live in the U.S., you should speak English. They also expect that everywhere they go, people should be able to speak English with them, because it is becoming a world language. That is why I see this quote as summing it up; Many Americans expect everyone here, and even outside of the U.S. to know English, but they themselves do not know any language other than English.
       I wonder if this phenomena was self-inflicted. Did America condition itself to believe their language to be superior? Therefore, have we undermined the non-majority cultures in America as well as the other cultures of the world? So much of learning about and experiencing a different culture comes from knowing the language. Meaning can be lost in translation, and experience and learning is not as meaningful when it occurs in a different language oftentimes. As a bilingual major, I have strong opinions on this topic and it makes me wonder how some people can be so passive or support English-Only.
       Proponents of English-Only argue that English unites our country. It gives it's people identity. What about those who come from different cultures though? I do not understand how we even define ourselves as natural born Americans when most everyone can from somewhere else somewhere down the line in their family. Another part of this chapter that really interested me was the concept of accent reduction in the ESL world. In my own endeavors to learn Spanish, becoming a speaker with "native-like fluency" has been a goal of mine as well as a push from my teachers. Since taking this class though, I have realized more and more that everyone has an accent. English speakers in the south have a different accent than those in the north. It is a part of identity. This is why I really identified with the term "accent addition." Like the difference between subtractive and additive, perhaps if the motivation behind learning and perfecting language acquisition was additive and not subtractive, there would be a change in motivation. No one wants to lose their identity, thus instead of pushing to change an accent, push to add one.
     Lastly, the dialogic approach was something that caught my attention. It closely resembles student-led instruction, which I have learned about in many of my previous classes. The features that compose this pedagogy are so helpful in regards to learning how to effectively teach your students. "Teach tothe students and not to the text" is my favorite quote from this chapter. I know that this will become increasingly hard as the pressure for standardized testing increases, but as a bilingual teacher I hope to be able to teach my students and not to the test.

Perspective on Language Learners

       This article really caught my attention and made me think. We have been talking about the different qualities that "good" language learners possess, but appearance and social status are not ones that I have ever thought of as being important. The study on Eva and Julie were both very interesting. In order to learn English they both accessed social acceptance and ties in order to gain opportunities to speak. Although Eva was an adult and Julie was in kindergarten, they both essentially followed at least part of the time the same road to language acquisition. Their atmospheres and circumstances were very different, but both needed to learn English in order to communicate with those around them.
       I think that as humans we all have an innate desire to communicate with others. Perhaps that is part of the reason why Chomsky says every human has the innate capacity to do so. This desire leads to us being social beings. Humans also adapt to their environment. Julie and Eva did not know the language in their environment, so they found ways to adapt so that they could participate in communication as well as interactions.
       What truly got me thinking was in the last part of the article where it described both Julie and Eva as ''appealing to the westerner's eye". Julie probably looked a lot like most of the other children in her class. For this reason, her appearance did not make her undesirable. As with Eva, she was described as being attractive in respect to western standards. She was fairly easily accepted into the social circle at work, after establishing herself as more than the "ESL immigrant". The article said that another girl in Julie's class, who was South Asian did not have the same fortune when it came to fitting into the class socially with her peers. This makes me wonder, had Eva been unattractive according to western standards, would she have been accepted as quickly, or at all, into the social circle at work? Or would she have continued to be seen as undesirable, not only because of her ESL immigrant status, but because of her physical appearance? Overall, this complicates the issue of SLA even more, but this article has made me think even more in depth about it than before.

Social contexts of Second Language Acquisition

One section of the readings this week that really interested me was the macrosocial factors in SLA, in particular, the global and national status of L1 and L2. Last semester I did a research paper on English-Only proponents. For many people, language is a form of patriotism. Many Americans oppose having other languages in the U.S., but I see this view as close-minded. Why do some people think of other languages as unpatriotic? America is made up of immigrants. We all came from somewhere. Our culture would be that much richer to be able to incorporate others' traditions, identities and languages into what already exists. 

Language is a part of each person’s identity. Acculturation is not just the learning of language, but also of culture. Before this summer, I had never realized how much weight culture holds in learning a language. When I studied in Guatemala and was immersed in the culture, I learned so much more about the language, the people and what made their identities than I ever could have in a classroom. Motivation plays a large part in SLA. I would not have learned as much Spanish in the classroom had I not been motivated to learn it. Like the examples in the book of dominant language speakers working or having ample contact with speakers of a non-dominant language, like in Paraguay Spanish speakers and Guarani speakers, the Spanish speakers generally do not learn to speak Guarani. This shows that there is a degree of separation between the dominance of language groups. This separation affects the social aspects in which a second language is acquired. In Guatemala one of my teachers was Mayan. She taught me a lot about the discrimination that raged between the indigenous and dominant cultures of Guatemala. She herself was Mayan, but did not know her mother’s native language because of the prejudice and violence that Mayans endured. It is so sad that because of the social factors, some languages are endangered. I think that for the benefit of monolinguals and multilinguals, societies should move towards greater appreciation of all languages despite social implications.