Blog Post 9 March 27

Chapter One in Interaction English in Its Sociolinguistic Contexts is about the globalization of English. English is spread throughout the world and has become somewhat of a universal language. English is a lingua franca, a language that ties people together who may not speak the same first language. Language and culture are directly correlated and when a language is lost, culture is lost as well. This makes me think about the Latin language and how it is a “lost language” and is no longer spoken. The author brings up the idea that many Asian countries (Korea, Japan, China, etc.) teach English to the students when they are young. After interviewing someone for our cultural project where Russian was her first language, she told me she is happy that she learned English when she was growing up because her father doesn’t know English and she says that he won’t even learn because he is too old. Her father now lives in the United States but wants to live in Ukraine. He barely knows the basics of the English language and doesn’t want to learn them because it would take too long. Some people like Rafaella (the girl I interviewed), put the English language in a positive light, while others (like her father) put it in a negative light because they believe their first language is better than English. According to the text, every time a culture was spread from one area to another, it was called globalized, even if the culture disappeared from its origin.

The majority of Americans think that immigrants are stealing jobs that are rightfully theirs. The economy is so awful right now so even Americans are having a tough time getting jobs. We live in a greedy country where people want money they deserve and don’t want to work at a job that pays minimum wage, which may be why so many jobs are given to immigrants. A quote from the reading, “globalization can be seen as the cause of a loss of cultural and linguistic diversity” is important because we don’t want to lose culture and language. In many countries, especially the United States, being bilingual is a major plus. I know that my mother is a nurse in Oak Lawn, IL and she gets many patients who speak different languages like Polish, Spanish, Italian and many others. She does know some medical terms in Spanish but she said it can be hard when all the family members speak one language that is not English and she can’t understand what they need. The United States seems to welcome some foreign things, like music and food, but the actual immigrants don’t seem to be accepted here because they either don’t want to learn English or they don’t have the ability to. The United States seems to still be called “The Melting Pot”, but is it really? Are we really accepting all cultures?

Blog Post 8 March 20

The “Becoming Black” article is the one that really caught my focus for this week. As an English Education major, I am still appalled at the fact that “Black English” is still considered a type of English. When I hear Black English or Black Talk, I refer to it as Ebonics. Ibrahim asks “at a time when North American Blackness is governed by how it is negatively located in a race-conscious society, what does it mean for a Black ESL learner to acquire Black English as a second language (BESL)?” But really, what does this mean? Does it mean that learning Black English helps you fit in with the rest of the African Americans who speak this vernacular? Or is how these non-native speakers adapt and conform to the cultural norms that are tied in with Black English such as how you move your body, modes of dress and ritualistic expressions?

I agree with Ibrahim says that being able to speak Black English “does not rely on a full mastery of the language.” It depends on ritual expressions. When African American people call each other “niggers” that is a way of identifying with them and saying “I too am Black” or even “I too am like you”. I didn’t really think of it this way because I have never had a close relationship with an African American individual, however a Caucasian friend of mine who dated an African American gave me some insight. She said that at a function where he was her date, another African American man also attended and she noticed that the men gave each other a look and then a friendly head nod. She asked him what that was about and he said, “To us it means that if something “pops off” that we have each other’s back.” She said, “But you don’t even know him.” He responded with, “That is just how it works.” Now this really opened my eyes because, A) girls would never do that to a stranger they have only said hi to because (from my own personal experience) girls can become catty and defensive when a stranger approaches, and B) I don’t believe that Caucasian men would do this with a guy that they were not introduced to. Obviously I am just making assumptions from what I know as a Caucasian female, but these ideas are pushed onto me from society as a whole.

The article mentions music, which I think is an important part of African American culture as well as any other culture. But there are huge stereotypes attached to this rap music that has been released in the past couple of years. I can quote my parents by saying that all the new rap songs talk about is sex, drugs, alcohol and partying and that’s “not how the music they listened to was back then”. However, it really was but the artists of the 1970’s and 1980’s did a good job of covering up their ideas about men, women, sex, drugs, etc. The first song that comes to mine is “Give It to Me Baby” by Rick James. It’s not explicitly using profanity or derogatory words, but the concept of the rap music today and the music of my parent’s generation is still the same. “The term hip-hop comprises everything from music (especially rap) to clothing choice, attitudes, language and an approach to culture and cultural artifacts, positing and collaging them in an unsentimental fashion.” I think that the majority of people will relate hip-hop to music, but I believe that music is a great audio form of learning. All types of music seem to be connecting with a culture or a group of people. For example, country music is tied with “hillbillies” or “people who live down south” while it is assumed that all African Americans, Puerto Ricans and Mexican people like rap music when that is not always true. Music is not the only way that people can connect to each other in terms of bonding cultural groups together. It is always going to be difficult for people to break the stereotypes of each cultural or racial group, but I think that students who want to teach TESOL or ESL have to realize that in order to begin to break the stereotypes; they have to start doing that with their students in the classroom.

Blog Post 7 March 6

After reading the first paragraph to Construction of Racial Stereotypes in English as a Foreign Language Textbooks: Images as Discourse by Taylor-Mendes, I could relate the pre-reading questions to a conference I attended in Chicago, The National Conference for Teachers of English. The question “Which races are represented in the images, pictures or cartoons? Which race is represented the most frequently?” was a question that was posed in one of my smaller seminars. What I had learned is that when children draw people, they usually keep their skin color white or peach colored, even African American children do this. Does this drawing or coloring of people actually matter? Images that aren’t correct give non native speakers the wrong impression about certain groups of people.

Studies have shown (that were presented in my seminar) that the color of the skin on people that are drawn by young children doesn’t really have any effect on them when they grow up. I didn’t think that images would affect non-native speakers because I only learned about what images do to native speakers. The images in an English as a Foreign Language Textbooks can be very important to the learning process of non-native speakers. Fatima says, “I see more White people than Black people. I saw ... when I saw Black people, I saw them in a poor situation. Here they don't put a rich man for example who have a job and have a happy family. To me this is ridiculous ... it's like they show the majority who have money is the White people, and who have this lifestyle is the majority of people who have money ... and they are White. I think the [English language] books ... This people who study in ... schools very expensive want to see themselves, and to see themselves is to see White people ... White people and happy situations, a car, a beautiful beach, beautiful things.” So from these images Fatima comes up with the conclusion that white people are happy and rich and black people are usually in a poor situation, which isn’t true. Fatima doesn’t know about the African American athletes, actors, singers, etc. that make them rich so they can have a beautiful car, beach and beautiful things. Our society is trying to come from the long way of racist biases that black people are poor and rich people are white. It is not clear cut like that anymore because black people are not slaves, but are actual people and I think that some older generations have the notion that white people are still above black people and we are not all equal. I agree with the few TESOL professionals who say that “EFL students rely on textbooks to develop their knowledge about English-speaking nations”. I think that students would be able to learn better by experience, by talking to English speakers and understanding their culture and language. I feel the same way about English speakers; they learn better when they are immersed in something rather than trying to memorize something from a textbook. Writing down definitions does not really resonate with students because they just memorize them for a short period of time and then they leave their brain.