2. Agenda Your voices on dialogic approaches in TESOL What’s dialogism in TESOL? What purpose does education serve? Should it replicate hierarchical social structures, or should education seek to change these structures to allow every person to participate fully? Nicole and Hanna’s discussion facilitation Project Proposals
3. Jacqueline says… Proponents of English-Only argue that English unites our country. It gives its people identity. What about those who come from different cultures though? I do not understand how we even define ourselves as natural born Americans when most everyone can from somewhere else somewhere down the line in their family. Another part of this chapter that really interested me was the concept of accent reduction in the ESL world. In my own endeavors to learn Spanish, becoming a speaker with "native-like fluency" has been a goal of mine as well as a push from my teachers. Since taking this class though, I have realized more and more that everyone has an accent. English speakers in the south have a different accent than those in the north. It is a part of identity. This is why I really identified with the term "accent addition." Like the difference between subtractive and additive, perhaps if the motivation behind learning and perfecting language acquisition was additive and not subtractive, there would be a change in motivation. No one wants to lose their identity, thus instead of pushing to change an accent, push to add one.
4. Josh says… Having only read the basic introduction to Dialogic Approaches to TESOL, I can postulate that a lot of the instruction I am viewing in the real-time classroom seems to be matching up with this shift from communicative to dialogic approaches in language learning. The ability to analyze and amplify a language community within a politically dominated setting where that second culture is minority or even abject at times, gives rise towards a pedagogy that inhibits the ability to appeal more towards the students instead of the direct structuralist approaches that favor teacher-centered instruction. As American society becomes more hybrid and desegregated, language input that is relevant to the cultural context will be the most effective way for language learning.
5. Angie says… As a future educator, I believe that one of the most important traits a teacher must carry is flexibility and the ability to teach in a variety of different strategies. Furthermore, it is important that the student feels appreciated for his identity and culture. Prator’s last question, “What are the aims of instruction?” brings up valid points. “What is the fine line between helping our students become intelligible to other speakers of English and psychologically colonizing our students by insisting that their rendition of English match as much as possible British or “standard” American speech? At some level, accent is of a part of identity” (9). This is true, we need to focus on inclusion rather than adjustment.
6. Amy says… In the United States there are more African American young men in prison than in college" (3). This struck me as unbelievably sad, because prior to that, Wong explains how Caucasians get lesser punishment for the same crimes. This eventually led into the idea of linguistic racism, which is a new idea for me that was really interesting. Do we treat those who are of lower power differently? We certainly do discriminate with the idea of Standard English. We don't treat African American Vernacular or other dialects of English as correct or even intelligible. The stereotypes we place on those people after hearing them speak is both astounding and extremely sad.
7. Su yin says… Wong did discuss the issue of accents, English accents and the different Englishes that exist in many former British colonies. I have always been interested in this because I have all my relatives in Malaysia, and English is widely used there because they’re a former British colony. Some people will refer to that English as Manglish sometimes, which is interesting because it is unique from the English that we speak here. Of course, so is British and Australian English. However, there are Chinese and Malay elements in Manglish. It feels like I have to switch back to Manglish from American English because locals will treat you differently if you have a deviant accent. I mean, if you’re white and go to Malaysia and have an American accent, then you’re fine, but for me and other people that look like locals, they might be treated differently. Maybe this has to do with power and status of accents, thought I’m not sure.
8. The nature of language Structural linguists (Ferdinand Saussure)—language and grammar as a set of formal rules. Langue/parole: the rules of language vs actual speech with its variations Both Saussure and Chomsky were concerned with discovering rules of language as an “internalized system”
9. Structural Linguistics in TESOL Structural approach to TESOL Teaching of phonemes, morphemes, syntax, lexicon Teaching of forms and patterns of the language Functional approach: Teaching of interperonal aspect of language (speech acts such as complains, jokes, invitations) Criticized as textbooks turned into laundry lists of items to be memorized. Reciting grammar rules became important. Language is not used dialogically.
10. Dialogic and Communicative Approaches Shift from focus on sentence level to larges stretches of discourse. There is no ideal speech community. Speech communities are heterogeneous and diverse. Language is culturally specific and historically constituted. Teaching of meaningful phrases not necessarily full sentences. Teaching of genres such as poems, research papers, lap reports
11. Chomsky and Hymes While Chomsky was interested in competence, Hymes was interested in what people actually said in the social context. Chomsky relied on intuition and selected strings of sentences and analyzed what native speakers of English would say . What is grammatical for Chomsky did not depend on the social context (e.g. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously) For Hymes social context and meaning was critical in language learning.
12. Dialogic Pedagogy Michael Bakthin--a Russian literary critic and philosopher who wrote about “dialogism.”: Utterance is the basic building blocks in dialogic approach. Bakthin saw “utterance” as the units of analysis: act of utterance also involves others. Author is not a single author expressing himself as an individual, but the act of utterance always involves the other. The aim of the dialogic approach is to support the inclusion of voices of those who have traditionally been excluded. It accounts for the sociopolitical aspects of language learning Shift from teacher-centered to dialogic, interactive, participatory learning as a social practice that is situated within the educational and community contexts.
13. What constitutes language teaching methods? Method is “an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material”—procedural! 1) method as proposed by theorists 2) method as practiced by teachers (methodology and pedagogy: what teachers actually do in the classroom) Approach is “a set of assumptions/beliefs dealing with the nature of language and the nature of language teaching and learning”—language philosophy! Techniques: specific procedures to accomplish particular objectives.
15. final project proposals The purpose if to help you gain a deeper understanding on an SLA related topic of your choosing. Find a topic that is close to your heart and teaching plans Settle with a topic that you found important and urgent in your own teaching and learning context. Your topic must be pedagogically important to your future profession as an ESL/EFL teacher. Visit me during my office hours to get some feedback on your preliminary project interests. Revisit your syllabus, course readings, recent issues of TESOL related journals (e.g. TESOL Quarterly, ELT Journal, Journal of Language and identity, Journal of Second language Writing)
16. Proposal components Running title: A tentative title of your project, your name and department. Research topic: two-three sentences of topic description (e.g., this study explores the role of gender in secondary ESL students’ writing) Rationale: reason(s) you choose this particular topic and the significance of this topic in the field of TESOL. Spell out the importance of this topic in relation to your own future research or teaching agenda. Research questions: some specific questions you would like to explore through your research project (e.g. what is the role learners’ home languages and cultures play in their socialization?) Social Context: What types of student population are you interested in studying? How you are going to explore the topic (e.g., referring to your personal experiences, synthesizing research articles, using existing data, interview or observation)? References: a list of tentative resources relevant to your project (e.g., readings, video/audio data, websites, images).
Approach embodies theoretical principles governing language learning and language teaching. Most of the time we see a disconnection between the methods as developed by theorists and the methods execited/constructed in the classroom as teachers. The difficulty is because the methods are based on idealized contexts and prototyical teacher and student identities. It is too limited to explain the complexity of teaching. It ignored that a sucessful instruction depends on many factors such as learner identities, teacher background, economic conditions and political contexts which are inextricably interwoven.
