Wednesday, October 15, 2014
To Y'all or not to Y'all?
Since my focus in the English department is Second Language Learning and I'm also from Texas, I found comp tale 59 especially pertinent.
Though I have not begun to create a lesson plan for a Second Language (L2) classroom, ideas pop up in my head every day of different tactics that will perhaps reach my students better or assist in their Second Language Acquisition(SLA). One of the recent phenomenons I've been taking into consideration is the aspect of utilizing "real" English language in the classroom as compared to textbook English. While this includes not only pronunciation but grammatical differences as well, I'm torn as to what my philosophy is on the subject. It seems to be generally accepted to at least mention, and sometimes showcase, these differences to the L2 student, but I have yet to find a study on the effects, either short- or long-term, of prolonged exposure to a specific regional system of English on L2 learners. I think it would be very interesting to compare how these students interact in different settings, both professional and casual, with native speakers and non-native speakers. I don't want to begin discussing this idea as I would simply seem to be writing a proposal paper rather than an informal blog post, but hey- it's food for thought right?
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This is a question that was posed in Sociolinguistics near the beginning of the semester. The majority of the students in that course are getting their MAs in TESOL, so SLA is where their focus lies as well. The question posed was, "What dialect will you teach your students?" Standard English is something to aim for, but it is never used organically (even with native speakers). Since Standard English is understood by all, while grammatical structures and lexical items from different dialect regions may be unintelligible for speakers of different dialects, I would probably lean more toward teaching Standard English. This is especially true if I were teaching overseas. Who is to say 100% of your classroom will be doing business with English speakers from America? The global differences in English, as well as the differences in American English, are definitely something to discuss in your classroom. I am unsure of the specific effects that teaching a certain dialect would hold on the learner himself (both with his English usage in different domains outside of the classroom and his attitudes toward language learning). That is certainly something to research!
ReplyDeleteI think it makes a lot of sense to include "real" English language in some ESL lessons. It has the potential to get students more interested in learning the language if they can see immediately how what they are learning has real-world applications. When I was learning Spanish, I was interested in how people "actually" say things, and being able to use some of those phrases in conversation motivated me.
ReplyDeleteOne potential downside, though, is students don't always understand the social context enough to know when certain phrases would work and when the timing or the context is sort of off. It could be useful to also tell them in which situations these phrases work most effectively.
Agreed. Many time people who know me well, during our conversations, I never felt I came from out of this country. But whenever I met a new person, who especially never met international people before, I had a hard time to communicate with them.
ReplyDeleteI wander why? Definitely, the new people were not familiar with foreign accents. Besides that, my friends are actually trying to use their hemisphere little bit more than others. Which means they paid attention to thinks what I want to say. Because ESL people has narrow vocabulary range and common senses. Using fun TV, show or pop culture for the class will be a great tool to learn the popular culture. As a ESL teacher, we should always think about what should we teach a class with current cultures of U.S.
Sounds like a project in the making! :)
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