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.
