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.