Blog 6, Writing

The article that was written by Will Baker is about ELF which is English as Lingua Franca. Baker argued that ELF doesn’t have its own culture. The ability to negotiate and adapt communication changes are the least important for the learners of ELF. It was very interesting to read this article. Before reading this article, I didn’t know what the English as Lingua Franca was. It is very interesting to read the article. I always make mistakes when I talk with someone else. Not a lot of people correct my mistakes. Some of my friends who are English native speakers, instead of correcting my grammatical mistakes, they make the same mistakes that I make when they talk. For example, I always get mixed up with pronouns of ‘he’ and ‘she’ when I have a conversation. Some of my friends were starting to make same mistakes that I did after they met me. When I talk to people that their native language is not English, we make grammatical mistakes when we make conversation. However, we understand each other. While I was reading this article, it made me wonder, is it okay to leave my ESL students to use ELF language? Can we tell ELL students to which conversation is grammatically right or wrong when many English native speakers make grammatical mistakes in their own conversation?

The second article that I read was written by Meredith Marra. This article is about the research that how Maori communicate in their workplace. The researchers needed to train themselves order to analyze Maori’s community. The researchers had to be respectful and behave to make Maori subjects comfortable.  

The video that we watched in our class was about the roles of writing in different countries. It was very interesting to see how many countries have different forms of writing. I agreed that for many ELL students, rather than understanding the format of English grammar, it is easier for them to memorize them. I am taking English 243 which is an English grammar course. In that class, many people know grammatical rules. Therefore, when the professor teaches new rules, they struggle with it. However, it is easier for me to understand the new grammatical rules because English grammatical rules are not similar with Korean grammatical rules. Therefore, I just memorize them. Also, in the video, one of the students stated that when teachers make correction in grammar rather than the concept of the essay, he gets discouraged. When the teachers make corrections on grammatical mistakes rather than the concept of the essay, I feel discouraged also. When I was in high school, I was struggling with grammar. I asked my ESL teacher to help. She gave me a book and I needed to write a summary of every chapter in the book. Until my paper had no grammatical mistakes, I had to keep revising. At first, I felt discouraged. I kept making same mistakes over and over. However, I started to realize the grammatical mistakes and didn’t make it. So, my writings got better. It wasn’t perfect; however, it got much better than it used to be. As a future teacher, is it right to grade the ELL students’ essays based on the grammatical mistakes? Or based on the concept of the essay? What if ELL students’ writing will not improve if we just look at the concept of the essay? How can we make ELL students to feel not discouraged when they see grammatical mistakes on their essays?

Blog 5

I had to read three articles which are Changing Currents in Contrastive Rhetoric:  Implications for teaching and research by Ulla Connor, Globalization and Language Learning in Rural Japan by Kybota, and Unfinished Knowldege by Kubota. The article that is written by Connor is about contrastive rhetoric. The author showed the influence of contrastive rhetoric by showing examples of Finnish, Japanese and Senegalese. The author stated that contrastive rhetoric has an effect on teaching English in many other countries. The article talked about researches that writing English by using examples from Japan and Senegal. It is very important for the teachers to teach ELL students how to write.

            The second article which is Globalization and Language Learning in Rural Japan is about languages that used in Japan. The article stated that many Japanese schools emphasized on repetition and memorization. Many Asian students have hard time on working with groups because many schools in Asian emphasize on working as individuals rather than groups. Many schools in Asian focus in individuals rather than groups. I didn’t realize this until I read this article. When I went to school in Korea, I don’t remember working with groups. It was always individuals rather than group work. I used to volunteer in an ESL class that I used to be in. I remember she told me that she was always having hard time to help Japanese students to work in groups because they don’t understand work in groups. Therefore, in a group work, some Japanese students were so frustrated because they didn’t understand working with another. So, ESL teacher was struggling with collaborate with another. Many Asian students are good at writing. However, it isn’t same with everyone. I always was struggling with using THE. In Korean language, they don’t have THE or A in the sentence. Therefore, I still struggle with using The or A.

            The third article is about a situation that this teacher didn’t know much information about students from different country and later she found out the importance of learning cultures. When I read this article, I was annoyed with this teacher is naïve. I don’t understand why many teachers don’t understand importance of culture. However, when I thought about it, there were still many teachers out there who don’t understand the importance of culture. In my C&I 208 classroom, I have a teacher as classmate and she told us that some teachers in her school don’t understand why Hispanic students are in the school. The teachers were looking at them as illegal immigrants rather than if they were students who want to get educated. There are many future teachers that I know don’t see the importance of learning a culture. I believe that every education majors should have a class with learning about bilingual or ESL. When I introduce my major to people, many people don’t even know what is bilingual or ESL class. I had to volunteer in elementary school. I was talking to a teacher and she didn’t even know what is ESL or bilingual.

            Therefore, how can we inform other teachers or community about different cultures? How do we know if the student’s writing is fine or not without being stereotypical? Sometimes, it is so frustrating to think about TESOL too much. 

Blog Post #4

The article of Kuma talks about the stereotypes of Asian cultures, and why do TESOL teachers have stereotypes. The main three stereotypes of Asians are obedient to adult figure, passive in the classroom, and lack of critical thinking. As much as I want to disagree on these stereotypes, I have to agree with the author. One of my friends went to South Korea for study of the broad. He was in a class, and asked his professor because he didn’t understand something. Everyone looked at him and the professor was very offended that he asked a question. He didn’t understand why. I asked one of my other friends who was an international student. He told me that many professors who teach in Korea believe that it is the not professors’ fault that the students don’t understand. This idea came from respecting elders.

            The article argued that Many Asian students are passive. However, when I was in ESL class, many students were not passive. They were active and liked to ask questions. However, many Asian students were so passive and quiet outside of an ESL classroom. I was one of them. Many ELL students have to come to a classroom where they have to speak the language that they are not used to. At least I felt that way. I felt more acceptable in ESL classes. In my opinion, people tend to judge foreigners based on the stereotypes. Is it really the culture? Or is it the fact that the students feel uncomfortable in the classrooms that make them passive?

I have stereotypes, and it is hard to ignore it. I was in my diversity classroom, and everyone in the classroom had to write stereotypes of each racial group. Asian was the only one that didn’t have any negative stereotypes. It was very interesting to see that. As a future teacher, how am I going to ignore stereotypes? What happens if I treated the students because of my stereotypes.

Blog 3, Language

The chapter two of Hall’s book is about how the language can be identifies individual’s socio-cultural status, and language can help people identify themselves. Since everyone’s identity is different, the language can be different. No matter what kind of the language is the person uses, their cultural perspective will be reflected in the use of the language. Norton’s article is very interesting. The article is talking about how language can change person’s social status, and the author did a research with Eva which was non-Native-English speaker.

            When I read these two articles, I was confused. Maybe the reason why I am confused is Hall’s article is view of non-essentialist, but I am not. I understand some immigrants cannot be themselves because of their limited language. However, I believe that it depends on the person rather than the language. My mom’s English is limited, however, no matter what situation she is in, she never let herself down. She was working with this teenager girl who always ignored my mom because of my mom’s limited English. However, every time when her co-worker ignores my mom, she stands up for herself. I did understand why Eva couldn’t stand up for herself. However, I don’t believe that it is necessary the language that made her not stand up for her social status. Everyone has different personality, different thought. Therefore, Norton’s research cannot be reliable.

There is a co-worker named, Na-na from my old job. She is never afraid of asking if she doesn’t understand. When she doesn’t understand the definition of the words, or meaning of the context, she isn’t scared to ask, and not be ashamed of it when she doesn’t know. I think that many immigrants, no matter where they come from, are scared to ask questions and admit that they don’t understand something which can make other people ignore the immigrants. It is very hard to encourage students to speak up in the class. I remember that many ESL students are very outspoken and loud in ESL classes. However, outside of ESL classes, they are quite. There is some reason why they act different. First, they feel comfortable in ESL classes than regular classes. Second, ELL students are scared to talk in the class, and scared that English-native-speaker might make fun of them even though it is not true.

Therefore, as a future teacher, how am I going to make our students to feel comfortable to ask questions no matter where they are at? Also, is it okay to encourage them to stand up for themselves when they need to? The more readings I do, as more I am worried about my future teachings.