Month: December 2016

Pros and Cons of Multilingualism

Natalie Lark

In chapter 10, Van Herk talks about multilingualism and multilinguals who grow up speaking different languages subconsciously without thinking about their language proficiency.

First, I would like to define multilingualism, and then to talk about its advantages and disadvantages. What is multilingualism? Who is considered mulilingual? And what are the benefits of being multilingual? To answer all these questions, I’d like to go over the definition of the word multilingualism first, and then to move on to multilinguals, speakers of two or more languages and their language skills.
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Problematizing “For Example”

Teachers often use examples to illustrate the point they want to make. As a language teacher, I am not an exception. While giving examples in my classes, I used to make many culturally embedded references, and when I did, many students’ showed a heightened interest. However, while I was reading Van Herk’s What is Sociolinguistics?, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the examples he used in the textbook. I have been thinking about this sense of unease for a long time, but I wasn’t sure how to articulate it until I read an article written by Patricia Duff (2004), and I found what it was that bothered me.

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A Discussion on “Language Talents”

Jamie (Xuan Zhao)

We always hear people talk about whether a person is “gifted at languages”, and we are dying to know if “language talents” really exist: is it true that someone was just born to be so lucky that they learn a second language in no time? Recently I read an interesting article about language talents. The author was inspired by a BBC documentary: Horizon Unveiling the Baby Myth, which talked about the process of babies’ language learning and its relationship with external environment.

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A Special Case of Language Anxiety?

By Wai In Chan

In one of our last classes, Lauren Godfrey-Smith gave an amazing lecture on language anxiety and the experiences of people who went through language anxiety. It was a really emotional experience for me because I felt that the study was acknowledging and validating my feelings about speaking and learning French in Montreal. Over 25 years of my life I have been learning French as a second language in English as a first language schools, and I STILL feel so much anxiety using the language that I avoid it at all costs even until today.

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Code-switching? Chinglish?

Yu-Ting

“Code-switching” is an interesting phenomenon for people who speak the same languages. When we covered the concept in class, the first thing comes in my mind is “Chinglish”, which refers to spoken English influenced by Chinese for most Chinese people who learn English as a second language. However, the example gives by Van Herk (2012), “Spanish-English switching in the US is often called Spanglish, while Canadian French-English switching is Franglais”. From my understandings, Spanglish and Franglais seem to have different connotation from Chinglish.

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Why only now?

Géraldine Gras (post #3):

For my third and last blog post, I wanted to focus on an issue that was made evident from our second class of Educational Sociolinguistics: the lack of teacher preparation for second language teaching (beyond the second language itself). My group and I presented on the second week, on the topic of language identity amongst others.  “How embarrassing! I knew nothing about language identity as a language teacher”, I thought to myself. This was followed by a ton of readings, hundreds of questions and self-doubt. It wasn’t until I spoke with teachers around me (from my schools and other graduate students) that I realized, my lack of knowledge was shared. Why is it that many of us, teachers, have never heard of certain concepts in our second language education despite completing an undergraduate?

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Anxiety

Sophia

Growing up attempting to speak multiple languages was not an easy task and there were many struggles that came with it. I always felt as though, I was not competent enough in any of the languages I was speaking, whether it was my mother tongue or a new language. This lead me to being a very shy and introverted child, I was to afraid to speak any language for fear of being inadequate. Ironically years later, I learned that many others feel this way and that there is actually a name to it, Language Anxiety. I realize now it was silly of me to think I would be the only person feeling these struggles, but having someone put a name to it, was a moment of clarity.

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Bonjour, Hi! This is so wonderfully Montreal!

Xiaoke Sun

“Language shapes a city” (de la Hosseraye, 2015). While walking around,
Montrealers never feel too surprised to hear the bilingual greeting. I suppose “Bonjour, hi” is the most appropriate expression to depict the uniqueness of this city — of being fairly bilingual. According to Statistics Canada in 2011, the greater Montreal area has nearly 2 million bilingual people. Young Montrealers have a rate of bilingualism as high as 80% (de la Hosseraye ,2015). Beyond the obvious cultural richness that bilingualism brings to this city, it also creates an advantageous environment for learners to acquire French/English as a new language.

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Belonging or not belonging, that’s a question.

Liting Liu

Having been in Montreal for exact four months, now I feel no much difference from the day I landed at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport. Since I don’t speak French at all and my English is limited as well, the awkwardness I felt at the beginning still haunts me. I live in the community but I doubt if I belong to it.

In the evening of August 12th, I arrived at Montreal. I got a number, waiting to be called by the customs officer. Beyond my expectation, they don’t use any bilingual broadcasting machine to announce numbers. Instead, they shouted out numbers themselves in French, and in the hundred-digit-omitted form (e.g. 230 is read as “trente”). It is only after learning some basic French that I got to understand their omission by that time. As you would have guessed it right, I didn’t know the officer was announcing my number until she called several times and asked my number in English. I heard people in the room snickering. At last, the officer kindly offered me a tip – “If you plan to find a job and stay here, you must learn French.” After passing numerous “ARRET” road signs, I got to the apartment, posted “Welcome to the world of being blind and deaf” on Facebook.

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The changing language attitude of Hong Kongers in recent decades

By Kunyao Kuang

 

My final project is about the language attitude and ideology in Chinese dialect films. When I was collecting materials for the project, I found many interesting studies about Hong Kongers’ language attitudes towards Cantonese, Mandarin and English so I would like to share it here.

Hong Kong was under British colonial rule from 1841 to 1997 (excluding the Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945). During this period, Hong Kong people used both English and Cantonese. It is believed that a diglossic relationship was formed that English was prestigious language that used by the government, schools and in other formal occasions, while Cantonese was used among friends, families and in informal occasions. Code-switching of English and Cantonese was, or is very common for Hong Kongers. In 1997, Hong Kong was returned to the sovereignty of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) by British. The government of HK SAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) has carried out a new language policy, which is “Biliterate and Trilingual Policy” that Hong Kongers should be proficient in written Chinese and English, and able to speak Cantonese, Putonghua and English (Tung, 1997). Therefore, after the handover, the status of the national language of the PRC, Putonghua (also known as Mandarin), was predicted to increase tremendously very soon.

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