Yurun Zhang
Dialects are considered to be regional forms of a language and serve the people of specific regions (Guo, 2004), and there are more than 2000 dialects or sub-dialects in China (Li, 2006). However, those dialects do not have a place both in Mandarin and English teaching classrooms. Standard Mandarin is expected to assist English learning because some research proves that accents caused by Chinese dialects are negatively transferred to English speaking (Huang, 2017). Therefore, teachers tend to tell students to practice and imitate standard English ways of speaking and writing to avoid being influenced by Chinese dialects. In addition, before becoming English teachers, people need to pass an exam to grade their Mandarin level. Only people who can reach the first three levels can be qualified for teaching English, so those who only speak dialects or have heavy accents when speaking Mandarin cannot become English teachers.
Here is a video to help you understand Chinese dialects:
I randomly asked five of my friends in China. They all speak English and Mandarin. Four can speak their dialect (Nanjing dialect, Xuzhou dialect, Wu dialect, Chinese Min), and the other can only understand their dialect, but cannot speak (Zhoushan dialect which belongs to Wu dialect). In addition, three of my friends used to be English major students and now work as teachers or translators. Two questions were asked: 1) Do you think Chinese dialects influence English learning? 2) Do you think Chinese dialects hinder people’s English development? Four participants answered that they feel Chinese dialects do affect English pronunciation, and one of the four participants said she sometimes can tell which province people come from when hearing them speak English. And all five participants agree that Chinese dialects do not hinder English development. Two said English should be regarded as a communication tool. As long as others can understand, people do not need to change their pronunciation.
There is much research highlighting the necessity of integrating native languages in EFL classrooms (Martin, 2001; Valencia, 2018) but little research is made on including first language dialects in EFL classrooms. For many students, languages they first learned are dialects. They start with learning and speaking dialects at home and only begin learning Mandarin after 7 years old when going to primary schools. Therefore, Chinese dialects should not be ignored in the English learning process. These ways of pronouncing and writing English affected by Chinese dialects should be differentiated from errors. They are not wrong but just different ways of speaking (Van Herk, 2018). Teachers should be more tolerant and inclusive, leaving room for Chinese dialects in an English class. The integration of students’ first language dialects into the classroom also informs students that it is incorrect to judge others’ pronunciation, grammar or word choice no matter what languages others speak. This can make students more confident even if their ways of speaking and writing English are affected by dialects. Negative attitudes of first language dialects may also result in the intolerance of other languages or cultures, which may leave students with a wrong belief that languages need to be spoken in the standard variety.
Questions
Do you think students’ first language dialects hinder their second language development? Should we include first language dialects into the second language learning process? How can we do that?
References
Guo, L. (2004). The relationship between Putonghua and Chinese dialects. In M. Zhou & H. Sun (Eds.), Language policy in the People’s Republic of China (pp. 45-54). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-8039-5_3
Huang, L. (2017). The negative transfer of Chinese dialects on English pronunciation: Case study of Wenzhounese. [Unpublished Master’s thesis]. University of Wisconsin-Platteville.
Li, D. C. S. (2006). Chinese as a lingua franca in Greater China. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 26, 149–176. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190506000080
Martín, J. M. (2001). Nuevas tendencias en el uso de la L1. ELIA, 2, 159-169. http://hdl.handle.net/11441/33967
Valencia, H. G. (2018). The integration of native language in EFL classes. English Language Teaching, 12(1), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v12n1p1
Van Herk, Gerard. (2018). What is sociolinguistic? (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
Hi Yurun, your idea is very interesting! I’m from Northern China, all my friends and family members speak standard Mandarin (just as how this picture demonstrates), so I never thought about this issue before. I agree with you that the integration of students’ first languages is important. Negative attitude towards students’ dialects and first languages may give them an immediate sense of frustration, make them feel worse about themselves. The pronunciation and grammar of a language are important, however, as long as people can understand, not speaking a language in a standard way won’t be an issue.
Elisa
Hi Yuron. I thought about your question and had an insight. More than having influence from my native language (Portuguese), I believe that now are the language learning strategies that take a greater place on how I continue learning and using English. I still feel encouraged to improve my English but now having a more distant regard at it. Even accent is something that would bother me more in the past than now. My deficiencies do not translate as inadequacies anymore and that perspective opened my eyes in relation to all the languages I have been trying to acquire after I learned English. Thanks for sharing. Carlos
Hi Yurun
Your thoughts completely resonate with me. This is something I have also been thinking recently. In my country’s context, even those who can’t speak in the standard dialect or variety of their native language are looked down upon. Speaking in the standard variety of a language is associated with prestige, social class, economic status, and overall identity of individuals residing in a country in the present time.
Now, in response to the question that you have raised whether speaking in native language dialects impact English language learning, I would say they do even if you speak in the standard variety of your language. The way people in your country identify the geographical location of someone through their regional dialect, accent, or intonation, it is the same when a Chinese, Indian or Bangladeshi speaks in standard English. Still, we will be identified as someone speaking Chinglish, Hinglish or Banglish. Does it really hinder our communication or potential if we can’t pronounce as a native English speaker? I think this is high time to revise our existing teaching pedagogy and assessment system where the objective of language learning is to establish effective communication. As we live in a multilingual society, we should be taught from schools how to build on our existing linguistic repertoire and enhance it further. Only then we can preserve our languages, culture, tradition, and history associated with it.
Nishat
Hi Yurun
I really like your topic here. To answer your questions, I don’t think that dialects influence students’ language learning negatively. For me, in terms of the dialect, it brings the unique and characteristic culture of that region together. If a region loses its dialect, it loses its culture, and if it loses its culture, it loses its roots. When we learn the second language, it does not mean that we have to abandon the previous language, on the contrary, these languages sometimes complement each other. They are interdependent. Also, they could give students a more comfortable environment to learn the language. However, so far, it is still difficult to enforce because of the time, energy and policy, etc.
Yi Hu
Hi Yurun, I really enjoy your topic and it resonates with me a lot. I’ll answer your question by sharing my own experience of learning Taiwanese. For me, my first language is Mandarin, and my second language is English since I have started learning English before learning Taiwanese. Therefore, Taiwanese is technically my third language. From my own experience, I would say first language dialects would not hinder their second language development. If anything, it helps boosting the learning process since students can make relation to both languages and develop their own form of understanding.
In terms of how to included first language dialects into the second language process, I believe that it really depends on the teacher’s willingness to incorporate the two language altogether. If the teachers themselves are not fluent in the students’ first language dialects, they would not be a feasible option. Alternatively, if the teacher is fluent in both languages, students would be able to ask questions and come up with their own definitions for various subjects in the language they feel most comfortable using throughout the class.
—Rebecca Lin