Drawing WE

When we were first assigned to draw what we considered the position of WE and our own context in WE, I was somewhat apprehensive. I am NOT an artist! In the end, though, we did not do much drawing, thanks to Google Images, which made me much less apprehensive.

However, I found our drawing activity to have much value for me as a teacher, a writing center director, and a PhD student. Our group focused on representing WE as many roads converging to meet as one - an apt metaphor for both the WE field and our individual journeys as students and future scholars of WE. We illustrated the road to "glocalization" with images of the different attitudes people and governments have toward WE. Economic issues and linguistic imperialism were two of the first issues we brought up, and these are, I believe, important issues that all of us (not just our group or our class but everyone) will have to address on this road to "going glocal."

While I understand that it is naive to think that these issues will be completely resolved, I do believe that scholars in WE can do a great deal of good through research and education and effect significant changes in time.

Code Switching and Code Meshing and the NS PhD Student

Until this week, code switching and code meshing were not terms that I used in professional conversation and certainly not in personal conversation. If you had asked me what it meant in my present teaching context, I would have said that I was not completely sure. But, to come back to a comment I made in my first blog, I have come to find that I have more in common with TESOL and WE issues than I had thought when I signed up for this class. And I think that the same is probably true of code meshing as well as the other topics we've covered.

Michael-Luna and Canagarajah's article "Multilingual Academic Literacies: Pedagogical Foundations for Code Meshing in Primary and Higher Education" has helped me to gain a clearer understanding of what it is, how it works, and how I might use it in my own context. In my conversation with Robin during class, I also worked through what some difficulties might be for me and for my students, which is the real focus of my blog entry today.

We talked about how difficult it would be for us if someone asked us to use any code meshing that we used in our blogs in an academic paper. As we talked , we realized that we would be more than a little nervous. Would I trust that the teacher really meant that I could write a paper the way I write a blog entry? Where is the line between acceptable and not-so-acceptable code meshing? What if I cross that boundary? What if I misinterpret the assignment? Now, I understand just how hard it was for the college students in the article to successfully transfer their own way of speaking and writing to an academic paper, especially since they had probably been well-grounded in the requirement to write in "academic English" when they write papers for their college classes.

So, I think the most valuable concept I can take from this article is that I need to be aware of my students' fears about writing if I were to ask them to do such a task. Certainly, I would need to prepare them well and make them feel more comfortable in bringing their own background and language into what has always been a formal context, one in which they often - if not always - had felt uncomfortable.

Now....if I can just manage to get past my own fears and insecurities so that I can do a little code meshing myself!

Do You Speak American?

I thoroughly enjoyed the documentary Do You Speak American that we watched in class today. To me, the most interesting part of the documentary involved the history of the American Standard Dialect. So many new concepts were introduced to me that I cannot possibly remember them all. A few stand out to me, though: that Philadelphia is considered the cradle of "correct" English, that Pittsburgh has its own accent and that Pittsburghers cling to their accents, and that American accents changed from R-less pronunciations to pronounced Rs just after World War II.

For many years, I have wondered about why American actors' and actresses' accents seemed more like British accents than what I think of as an American accent. I had even discussed possible answers with my mom, but we could never come to any conclusions. I also remember noticing that Jackie Kennedy had this same kind of pronunciation in the 1960s that movie stars in the 1940s and 1950s had in the movies I watched. After discovering that Americans began to used pronounced Rs after World War II, I think I might now know at least part of the answer to that question.

I plan to watch the rest of the documentary...when I have the time....but not this week!

English: The Killer Language???

Somehow I feel odd commenting on this topic since I am a native English speaker and am practically monolingual (with only a brief background in French, which I have forgotten for the most part). Having lived in the same country for my entire life and communicating solely in English except for my five years of French in junior high and high school, I have a bit of trouble seeing English as a language that would take over and "kill" another language. Neither can I imagine anyone feeling threatened by it.

However, I do understand that the prospect of my language (or any other language for that matter) becoming an international language can be a frightening prospect to some people in other countries. I know I would not like to be forced to use another language in my daily life or to take classes and learn in another language. And for me, "forced" is the right word. I would really need a compelling reason to make this change. But how much of this is because I have never really had to communicate with speakers of other languages in any language but my own? I'm not sure. I can only imagine that others must feel the same way: frightened and a bit of anxiety at the prospect.

I also know that, while I certainly do not consider English a "killing" language, others apparently do. Many groups seem to resent English "taking over" their language, and, given the elitist statement made by Prince Charles about how American English is "very corrupting," I can see why. I know I resent his comments. If he feels this way about American English, which is so closely related to British English, I have to wonder what he would say about other varieties of English in the Outer and Expanding Circles. His superior attitude about British English is, I feel sure, one of the reasons that speakers of other languages feel threatened by the spread of English and the possibility of it becoming a lingua franca.

Along these same lines, we talked about the way a good many Americans feel about the Spanish language being brought into the country and possibly "corrupting" our own language. After listening to Robin's comments, I understand how people in San Antonio feel when they cannot communicate in English in the same businesses where they used to, not so long ago, do business in English only. I'm sure they, and by extension other Americans, feel the same fear and anxiety that those in other countries do who feel threatened by English.

And so, I have come full circle. I have not resolved anything, except maybe to say that I still feel that English in itself does not pose a danger to any language. The danger to other languages seems to me to be the people who mandate the kinds of changes that might kill another language, not the language itself nor most of its speakers.

First Day of World Englishes

This was the first day of World Engishes (WE) for the Pre-Summer 2010 semester. I have to say that I was a bit apprehensive at first because I have no TESOL background at all. However, between the readings and the class discussions, I feel much less apprehensive.

Two activities/discussions were the most helpful to me: the acronyms and the definitions. That is not to say that all of the activities were less useful, but I really needed these two to help me to better understand the readings and discussion.

As I was reading the articles and book chapters that were due today, I realized that there are almost as many acronyms in TESOL and WE as there are in the United States military! Knowing these acronyms will help me to read course readings faster and more accurately.

Second, I was unfamiliar with some of the terms, such as Inner Circle, Outer Circle, and Expanding Circle, and had only a passing knowledge of the nuances of some of the other terms. For example, though I know the difference in dialect and accent, I had never really thought much about how and why they are different. On the other hand, I had no idea that there were "three circles" of English speaking countries, nor would I have been able to say what countries belonged where. I would have guessed that Britain, the U.S., Canada, Austrialia, and New Zealand would be the Inner Circle countries, but I wouldn't be quite sure about the other two circles.

The most encouraging thing I discovered today was that my experiences and background are not as far removed from the WE discipline than I had imagined. Much of what I do in classes and in the writing center touch on WE issues already; I had just not thought of this work in the WE context.

Learning some of the important names in WE has also added to my confidence level as well. I actually have opinions now!