Blog Post 12

Matusda’s article is about how World English affects on writing. Teachers need to emphasize what is suitable for the context but also linguistic information that the students must know.  The article has guideline to teach WE in writing because it is so complicated to teach writing to some students. I think writing is very hard and most complicated. Some ELL students can write perfectly in writing but they are not fluent in other like speaking or listening.

Kubota’s article is about issues of globalization and she said that globalization has created the discourse of kokusaika in Japan. The discourse of kokusaika is focus teaching and learning a foreign language, especially English. In Japan, many schools favor teachers from America and Britain. My boyfriend wanted to teach in Japan after he graduated from ISU. He is fluent Japanese and lived in Japan for a year and he is American. He graduated with 3.8 G.P.A. However, he got denied two times for teaching in Japan because he wasn't qualified enough. He told me that it is very hard to teach English in Japan.

 It was very interesting to see that the “learning English is the understanding of the world and cultural diversity” (26) because English is international language. Japan is not the only country to emphasize learning English. However, it seems like many countries believe that fluent in English equals to succeed in life. I believe that it is important to speak more than one language. However, people shouldn’t force students to learn English. Many of my friends in Korea are so frustrated because of English. One of my friends came to United States to learn English, because he thought that he will get a job right away if he was fluent in English. However, when he went back to Korea, he didn’t because he graduated from a college that not many people know of. Then, he e-mailed me that how he regretted that he came to United States. Another thing that bothers me is that many countries believe that by bringing native speakers to the country, where English isn’t their first language, is not going to help the students. For example, Korean students will not be fluent in English because they will not use English as much as they use Korean. Therefore, the country needs to emphasize on how to teach English rather than hiring the native speakers because it doesn’t mean that they are capable of teaching the students well.  Also, what happens if English became not international language? I feel like many countries should emphasize on teaching their native language first and then teach English. The reason is that if a student isn’t fluent in their native language, they are not going to be fluent in their second language. 

Blog 11: Accents

The chapter two of Lippie-Green’s book is about accents in standard and non-standard English. I was fascinating to find out that even American people have accent.  Also, there are different types of accents depend on the country. Filipinos, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese and many people from different country have their own accents when they come to United States. I do have accents; however, my accents are not as thick as other people that English is their second language. I have accents when I pronounce some words or get nervous. Last summer, I was hanging out with my Korean friend for two months. Then, I realized that my accent got thicker than it was before. Then, I stopped talking Korean, and started talking in English often, and then my accent wasn’t thick anymore. Many of my friends that I knew since I came to United States have accents. My Korean friends think that my English accent is weird, however, to Native Speakers, I don’t have accents.  My Korean friends and I came to United States at the same age, and we lived her for about ten years. But how come, I don’t have as thick accent as theirs? I realized that my Korean friends hung out with many other Koreans and didn’t speak much of English except school. However, when I become sophomore in high school, I met many of friends that English is their native language. After sophomore in high school, I hung out with Native speakers than Koreans. The chapter talked about a case when the bilingual teacher had accents. When I was in sixth grade, this bilingual teacher taught my friends and I. The bilingual teacher had very thick accent, and so did we. However, my brother had a bilingual teacher who didn’t have a thick accent. She talked in Standard English. My brother and his friends learned by this teacher without accent. My brother and his friends do not have accents when they speak English. Therefore, is it important for people to not have accents? I think, accents don’t matter unless the grammar of the English is perfect. When my friends make fun of me when I have an accent, I always say that it doesn’t matter if I have accent or not, as long as they understand what I am trying to say.  

            In chapter five of the book from McKay and Bookhorst-Heng, it talked about the features of variation and standard ideology. For many Asian students, it is hard to differentiate between R and L or v and b. When there are more than two Rs or Ls, it is hard for to pronounce. In Korean language, there are no different pronunciations of B or V. Therefore, many students are confused with B and V. I hated the fact that I couldn’t pronounce many words. So, I asked my Native speaker friends to pronounce the words until I could pronounce it. I still cannot say celebrity. I am still working on pronounce the word. After reading these readings, it made me realize that is it important for the students to not have accent? Is it really matter if the teacher has accents? It having accents will affect students? 

Blog #10

Chapter 2 is about inner circle and outer circle, and expanding circle. The inner circle rejects English Language Learners and believes that it is a problem to have language diverse in society. The outer circle encourages English but ELL students need to learn English as much as native language students. The expanding circle is motivating ELL students to learn English even though they might not have perfect proficiency in English. Chapter 3 is about different approach to help ELL students in Great Britain and the United States. In the U.S., they pulled out programs that focus on language and social aspects. In Great Britain, they believe that pull out classes aren’t working.

These two chapters were very interesting to me because these chapters talked about controversy within ELL students. Many people believe that bilingual education isn’t a good program for ELL students. However, there are so many wrong facts about bilingual education. Also, not many people know about bilingual education, and some bilingual programs taught in a wrong way. Before I went into major, I was against bilingual programs because I saw social segregation when I was in a bilingual and ESL programs. My friends and I rejected to hang out with Americans because we believed that they wouldn’t understand us and only hung out with the students in ESL or bilingual programs. However, after taking all these classes about bilingual programs, I realized that ESL or bilingual programs that I attended to didn’t teach us about values of cultures. We only focused on grammar of English than social values. I think many bilingual programs in school don’t necessary focus on other except English. Because ELL students don’t learn the values of cultures in classrooms, they have stereotypes against the Native English speaker students. I went back to my ESL class for volunteer. I saw the same reaction and thoughts with the students in the ESL class. They didn’t want to hang out with American students, and they only hang out with each other. They believed that Americans don’t accept them because of their limited English. It has been ten years since I graduated, and it was so shocking to me to see the same problem that many students struggled with the years ago. Sometimes, I am so sad that many people don’t know the benefits of bilingual programs. I met many people who don’t even know about bilingual programs. I believe as future teacher, it is a good idea to learn about other programs than pulled out programs that is the best for ELL students.