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.

Blog post # 9, Global English

Chapter one of International English In its Sociolinguistic Context is about globalized of English. This chapter talks about how English is spread throughout the world. I believe that English is important and it becomes universal language. Many countries teach English like Korea, Japan, China, Philippines, and etc. The author discuss that many Asian countries teach English since they are young. However, people are wondering that if teaching English when the children are young can be effective when their home language isn’t fully developed. I learned English when I was in Korea. I learned English 3^rd grade through 6^th grade when I was in school. However, I didn’t learn any English because I didn’t see the importance of it. Many Korean parents want their children to learn English since they are 5 years old. Is learning English that important? Many people believe that learning English is equal to be successful in the future. I don’t believe that people need to learn English order to be successful. However, some of my friends in Korea desperately want to come to U.S.A. to learn English because it is hard to get a job in Korea if they cannot speak English very well. All of my friends are jealous of me because I can speak English. They don’t understand the conflicts that I go through because they think that I am lucky to have an opportunity to learn English in America.

Also, many American pop cultures influenced many countries. Many music industries influenced many countries. I remember that one of my friends in ESL class told me that she doesn’t understand why many countries want to be like American. They like American songs, and want to learn English. I think the reason is because United States influenced many countries. Therefore, many countries want to learn English. I interview my Filipino friend for the paper that I wrote. She told me that United States influenced Philippines because Philippines were a colonizer of France and United States took over. She told me that English is their native second language in Philippines that everyone knows how to speak English. They focus on teaching English so much. When my friend came to United States, her reading level was higher than any other students in her classroom.

Is learning English that important? Which one is more important, learning the students’ home language or learning English first? In my bilingual classes, I learned that order to learn the second language perfectly; students need to be fluent on their L1. However, many people believe that English is very important before the children learn their L1 first. It is interesting that many people in U.S. don’t need to learn the language other than English. But many other countries, it is necessary to learn English. 

Blog post 8

First article that I read was Becoming Black:  Rap and Hip-Hop, Race, Gender, Identity, and the Politics of ESL Learning by Ibrahim. This article is about how some African students in French become black, want to speak black language, learn how to dress, hairstyles. This article was very interesting. Many African students learn English very fast by the television, and friends. When the one of the students said people judge her as student when she cannot speak English. That is true. It was very interesting how people judge someone just because they cannot speak English in America. When I went to take a citizenship, I was waiting to take the test. While I was waiting, this man did something wrong because he didn’t understand English very well. The security guy stopped the man and called him, “Dumb-ass.” I was very upset at this security guy. I wanted to say something but my mom stopped me. I went up to him and apologized about the things that ignorant security guy said. I sat down next to him and talked with him. This man who couldn’t speak English, he was a doctor in Iran and he wanted to get a citizenship because he wanted to learn English and wanted to be lawyer. This man is very smart guy, and just because he couldn’t speak English very well, people automatically judge him as not well educated. It was very interesting to see African students learn Black English. What is proper way to speak English? Isn’t Black English is part of dialect, like how people speak in Texas? I don’t know who can judge to speak what is proper language.

Second article by Kubota is about how the idea of race can shape social, cultural and political dimension of language teaching and learning. While I was reading this article, it made me think how powerful racism is. When is it okay to talk about races? This article made m realize that it was very important to talk about race.

Third article by Rich and Troudy is about a small scale study of five male Muslim Saudi Arab learners in TEOL graduate programmed at a university in the United Kingdom. Some students felt uncomfortable to answer some questions that are true about Arab. I understand how they feel. They understand why Arab people marry four wives in closed society because it is their culture. They just know. My friend called her brother Kuya which means older brother in Tagalong. However, she stopped calling him that name because she was sick of answering to people who asking the meaning. Those Arab students feel like the outsider because people look at them as outsider. I understand that we are individually different, but why can’t we accept each other? I sometimes get so frustrated because people judge me based on my skin color. It would be the same with Arab students. When I was working at Wood Field Mall during the spring break, this woman came up to me and asked me directions very slowly, thinking that I cannot understand her. I answered her, and I was upset that she automatically thinks that I cannot speak English very well. It would be the same for many of my other friends. As a future teacher, it is important to teach racism and understand the students.

Blog post 7

The article The article Construction of Racial Stereotypes in English as a Foreign Language Texts is by Cosette Taylor-Mendes who researched and interview question to students and teachers on Sao Paulo, Brazil. The researcher wanted to know how Brazil students look at race, class and gender when they look at the images in English language textbooks. Many English language textbooks portrayed United States as white elite and blacks are represented as poor and powerless and whites are powerful and wealthy. This article is very interesting. I never thought about how English language textbook portrayed United States. Also, I learned that how powerful the vision imaginary is.

I don’t remember seeing images of black people in the English language textbook when I was in Korea. I realized that black people were portrayed in a negative way in many cultures. This might be something that I don’t want to tell people. However, my parents don’t want to associate with black people. They don’t want me to associate with black people. Last semester, I had a black roommate and my parents were really worried. Maybe, the reason why my parents have negative stereotypes towards black people is that how English textbook that they learned when they were in school, and movies portrayed African Americans. Over the weekend, I called my parents and asked some questions why they hate African American so much. My parents told me that they believe that black people are violent and poor. Therefore, I asked my parents what makes them think that way. My parents told me that because that was how English textbook, movies, books and news are portrayed black people. My parents stated that, “If black people were nice and rich, why the media portrayed black people like that? Why English textbook portrayed black people like that? The reason why media portrayed black people in a bad way is that because it is true.” I cannot blame my parents that how they feel because I understand why they dislike African Americans. However, at the same time, it is very frustrated.

I was really shocked after the conversation. As a future teacher, how can I inform the students’ negative stereotypes toward racial groups? What if the student has already believed in his/her negative stereotypes? And how can I change that? 

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?