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.