Educational Sociolinguistics

Interaction in ESL classrooms

Zahra Zamani

A community of learners can be defined as a group of people who interacts positively through sharing values and beliefs and actively engaging in learning from one another—learners from teachers, teachers from learners, and learners from learners. They thus create a learning-centered environment in which students and educators are constantly and intentionally interacting with each other and thus constructing knowledge together. Learning communities are connected, cooperative, and supportive. Peers are interdependent in that they have joint responsibility for learning and share resources and points of view, while sustaining a mutually respectful and cohesive environment.

Do we have an alter ego when speaking a different language?

Yating X

Oral English class was one of my favourite courses when I was pursuing my undergraduate studies in China, because this was the only course where we were supposed to talk only in English. Back then, I enjoyed speaking English more than my native language, Mandarin, because when speaking the former, I could always see a different side of me, a more confident and outgoing self. And the comment I received most from my classmates at that time was “You look so different when you speak English.”

I have noticed this phenomenon very distinctly in myself. Even though English is my second language and sometimes I even had some difficulties expressing myself very fluently and clearly due to my limited language proficiency, I still found myself being more expressive and passionate when speaking it, which intrigued me to ponder the question: Do we really have a secondary personality when speaking another language?

My round, red face.

Chris

Sometimes I wish I was a trim, proper looking chap from the European continent, who could be a native speaker of any number of languages. The type where people paused and wondered, “I wonder what language he speaks ? Could it be French, German, Portuguese ? Could it be Dutch ?” I wish there was something ambiguous about my appearance that didn’t shout my native language from a mountain top. However, I’m a burly, ginger bearded man (the unfortunate genetic makeup of someone from Northern England), whose round, red face screams SPEAK TO ME IN ENGLISH. Since the majority of native English speakers don’t speak a second language, it’s fair to look at me and think I don’t either. Except that I do. I grew up speaking French, and I’ve spent years learning Spanish.

On the education of the Chinese immigrant children in Quebec

Chingheng Chang

As an international student with a Chinese cultural background, I have always been attentive to Chinese immigrant children’s education in Quebec or other places in North America. Since my main field of interest is language education, the language use of immigrant families is an issue that has always been one of my greatest concerns. According to an ethnographic study involving ten Chinese immigrant families in Quebec, Curdt-Christiansen (2009) discovered that society, economy, parents’ experiences, and cultural beliefs are factors that have heavily influenced the language use of a family (the invisible language planning) and expectations of their children. After reading Curdt-Christiansen’s study, I have a bad feeling for the Chinese immigrant children: Some of them are probably going to sacrifice most of their childhood time learning at least three languages (Chinese, English, and French) and cramming for many other extracurricular subjects.

Why “no”?

Yiling

According to Van Herk, “People evaluate an interaction and decide which way of speaking is the best suited to it, and change their language (and expectation) accordingly. Sociolinguists use the term styleto describe this kind of intra-speaker(within the speaker) variation.” (p104)

During the class activity with our guest lecturer, when I received a text message from Fangzhe, inviting me to skip my class on Thursday and go to a hockey game with him, my impulsive answer was “no”, which was literally what I typed back. Would I have replied differently to a different person? Or would I have replied differently if he had asked me in person or by phone? Sorry, but NO. I would have replied the same in different contexts and to different people. This is my language styleto my friends, which is rooted in my personality and also reflects the degree of closeness between me and my friends.

Translating Journey Part 2 – Enlightening your brain

Lucía Ringuelet

Originally from Argentina, I arrived in Montreal with a very basic knowledge of French. While I used the translation dictionary a lot, particularly in the beginning, I also learned a great amount of vocabulary in a fully immersive context: attending high school in French, surrounded by francophones. In other words, the majority of my knowledge of French was acquired in a naturalistic way.

As a consequence, at some point I started to have tiny moments of revelation. These came when I made a connection between a French and a Spanish word, often while talking with my family and looking for the Spanish translation. Although many words share the same etymology in French and in Spanish, some do not. My episodes of revelation consisted thus in matching two words that were etymologically different in each language, yet shared the same meaning. Having learned the equivalents in different contexts and societies, I understood them in slightly different ways. Making the connection would bring a new level of comprehension (ex. “Oh! ‘Handicap’ means ‘deshabilidad’!”).

Oh, you are Japanese, BUT you speak English well!

Yuri

I went to Australia two years ago. It was a fantastic trip, and I met many people including 10ish local Australian people. When I introduced myself, all of the Australians said “oh, you are Japanese! But you speak English well!”

“Wait, what do you mean by but?”, I wondered. Is it weird that a Japanese person speaks English well? I never asked the question because I knew they didn’t mean anything negative. I just smiled and politely said ‘thank you’. BUT, there are many Japanese people who speak English well, and there are very many Japanese people living in Australia. Have you not met any Japanese person who speaks English? Really?

ELF: how to best implement it?

Hector Alvarez

I’m currently reading a book called Teaching English as a Lingua Franca: The journey from EFL to ELF by Marek Kiczkowiak and Robert J. Lowe, which provides practical activities to develop effective ELF classes. However, first of all, what is ELF? ELF stands for English as a Lingua Franca, first defined by Alan Firth (1996) as “a ‘contact language’ between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common (national) culture, and for whom English is the chosen foreign language of communication” (p. 240). However, the focus of ELF in recent years has become more encompassing, including now both native and non-native speakers of English.

ELF is not a variety of English, but a phenomenon that emerges from the interaction between different English users that accommodate and adapt their speech to their interlocutors. For example, a British speaker who usually use the expression “to take the mickey out of you” would, instead, opt to say “criticize you”, as the former, although common within the British English speech context, is not common among other varieties of English. Hence, in an international context, among users of different English varieties, it’s safest to choose the type of language that steers clear from what would be considered slang from a particular English variety.

When I want to be polite/ impolite…

Mengting Hu

I am Chinese, and I speak English quite fluently as a second language. I have been studying and working in English-speaking environments for several years. However, after all those experiences, when I want to be polite, or sometimes, to be impolite, it is still relatively difficult! Anglophone friends sometimes tell me I am not polite when I think I am very polite. Occasionally, I get disappointed in myself for being too polite when I should not.

Language Appropriation (2 of 3)

By JM

I’m writing this as a mostly loose follow-up to my initial blog post on the ethics of language learning—that is, if language is an extension of culture, then could learning another language be seen as cultural appropriation? I think I’m closer to my own understanding of this, which is that, yes, it is arguably cultural appropriation; however, I’m also now thinking that perhaps not all cultural appropriation is intrinsically negative. I know this is an extremely fraught proposition, but consider the following.