language learning – Educational Sociolinguistics

Interesting Translanguaging Phenomena

Shuhang Li

What is translanguaging?

Translanguaging is the act performed by bilinguals of accessing different linguistic features from their unique repertoire in order to maximize communicative potential. It’s also the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages (García,2009). Everyone has his own unique language, that is, personal idioms. No two people’s personal idioms are the same. The following are two examples of super language practice.
Example 1: Chinglish

Smilence 笑而不语= smile + silence, referring to the stereotypical Chinese reaction of smiling without saying anything.

Democrazy 痴心妄想 = democracy + crazy; mocking the so-called demo- cratic systems of the west and in some parts of Asia where certain legis- lations such as the ownership of firearms can be protected due to political lobbying and, in the case of Taiwan, parliamentarians get into physical fights over disagreements. The occurrence of the word was prominent after the news of Trump’s victory in the US presidential election broke.

You can you up, no can no BВ, meaning ‘If you have the ability then you do it. If you don’t have the ability, then say nothing.’, which is a translation of你行你上啊,不行别逼逼。

To interpret these expressions, we must understand the social and political context behind them, the history of Chinglish, the subjectivity of the Chinese people, and the ideology they challenge.
Example 2: Examples of Chinese Dialogue in Singapore

Seetoh: Aiyoh (discourse particle), we are all<aki nang> 自己人 = own people, meaning ‘friends’), bian khe khi (免客气 = don’t mention it). Ren lai jiu hao (ЛЖ = good of you to come), why bring so many ‘barang barang’ (‘things’). Paiseh (歹劳= I’m embarrassed). ‘Nei chan hai yau sum’ (你真有心= you are so considerate).

Jamie: Don’t say until like that. Now, you make me malu (‘shame’) only. You

look after my daughter for so many years, mei you gong lao ye you ku lao (没有功劳也有苦劳= you have done hard work even if you don’t want а prize). I feel so bad that I could not come earlier. ‘Mm hou yi si’ (不好意思 = I’m embarrassed). I was so shocked to hear about Seetoh, tsou lang ham ham (做人 ham ham -meaning life is unpre- dictable), jie ai shun bian. (节哀顺变= hope you will restrain your grief and go along with the changes)

Bold: Hokkien

In square brackets < > : Teochew

Underlined: Mandarin

In double quotation marks: Malay

In single quotation marks: Cantonese

Italics: Singlish

Sometimes people confuse the concepts of supralinguistic practice and code-switching. From the above examples, it is true that the two people switched between Hakka, Chaoshan, Putonghua, Malay, Cantonese, English, and Singaporean English, but such consideration is not very meaningful. Code-switching presupposes that monolingual mode is the default mode, and then people need to switch back to monolingual mode, but this presupposition does not apply to multilingual communities. The boundary between languages is dynamic and fluid.

Where did the practice of interlanguage come from?
The English translation of translingual practice is translated from Welsh trawsieithu to describe such a teaching practice: teachers teach in Welsh and students respond in English. Such a teaching practice can change the power relationship between teachers and students, and focus on meaning-giving and identity-building in the teaching process.
The concept of language practice is borrowed from Humberto Mathurana and Francesco Varela, Chilean biologists and neuroscientists, who emphasized that language should not be regarded as an established fact or finished product, but as a process that is constantly being shaped. Language practice refers to the coordinated combination of various physical, physiological, semantic, and cognitive attributes and abilities by language practitioners. The uniqueness of this way of looking at language practice is reflected in the following three aspects: first, it makes us regard language as a process; Secondly, it makes us realize that the distinction between linguistic, paralinguistic, and non-linguistic in language practice is meaningless. What is important is feeling, experience, history, memory, subjectivity, and culture; Third, language learners do not acquire a language but adjust their bodies and brains to adapt to the language practice around them.

What does the practice of translanguaging emphasize?
The addition of trans to language is not only to better summarize the dynamic and mobile practice of multilingual but also to illustrate the following two points: first, multilingual do not think in a monolingual system under the political definition; Second, human thinking needs to use a series of different cognitive, semantic and modal resources, not limited to traditional reading and writing.
Trans in the practice of translanguaging emphasizes its three characteristics:
First, transcend, that is, supralinguistic practice is a flowing practice, which transcends the language system and structure constructed by society.
Second, transformative, that is, supralinguistic practice can not only change the language system but also change personal cognition and social structure.
Third, translinguistic practice, that is, translinguistic practice, can bring a new understanding of language, language learning, and language use to different disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, sociology, and pedagogy.

Question: What is your biggest difficulty in understanding translanguaging? If these examples appear in your English teaching, how can you help your students understand them?

Reference:
Li, W.(2018). Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics, 39 (1), 9-30.

García, O. (2009). Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective
Malden, MA; Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Why do people keep dropping out of the Francization program?

Yurun Zhang

One of the things that most people would do when they arrive in Quebec is to learn French. When I first arrived here, I was really excited to take the free French courses and expected to speak fluent French.

However, my expectations and feelings changed after I stayed in this full immersion program for one year. I felt that the course did meet up my expectation and finally decided to drop out. Apart from me, I also saw many of my classmates drop for different reasons. Generally, there are some reasons for quitting:

Financial assistance for courses is not sufficient for living in Montreal. As their financial needs increased, they needed to start working, even though they haven’t reached the threshold for linguistic autonomy.
The language benchmark needed to obtain Canadian citizenship is proficiency level 4 (d’Haese, 2018).
French is too hard to learn, and people cannot see their progress in French and start to forget English words.
Certain professors treat students impatiently or intentionally target certain students.
People are too busy with school or work, so they have to give up learning French in class.
Some want to have courses but just cannot register because there are no available seats.

Here is a video about one student who dropped out of the francization program and talked about his reasons:

Can those concerns be solved? Probably, learning French during working hours can be a solution. Denis Hamel, vice-president of workforce policy development for the Conseil du patronat du Québec (CPQ), believed that teaching and learning French in the workplace during working hours is the best and most efficient way to learn French.

He said,

“You cannot expect either an immigrant or a Canadian-born person to follow courses in the evening or on a Saturday morning above all the duties we have in our lives.”

Providing opportunities to learn in the work place can solve many of those concerns, such as not having enough financial assistance, no time to learn, and no available seats to register. More flexible learning opportunities can be offered after working hours. Besides, instead of sitting in the classroom for 4 hours every day, some activities can be organized to practice French in real life, so people do not feel tired but still have to sit in class to learn. People can also see the progress of their French when using in real life.

Questions

If you are taking or once took a Francization program, what are the reasons that make you stay or drop out?

How can the Francization program be improved to keep students staying and learning French?

Reference

D’Haese, S. (August 20, 2018). Francization in Laval: The state of the issue. Government of Quebec. https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/en/blogue-blog/francisation-francization-laval-eng

Translanguaging pedagogy in second language teaching

Jundong Ma

Translanguaging can refer to a pedagogical process of utilizing more than one language within a classroom lesson or it can be used to describe the way bilinguals use their linguistic resources to make sense of and interact with the world around them. The term “translanguaging” was coined in the 1980s by Cen Williams in his unpublished thesis titled “An Evaluation of Teaching and Learning Methods in the Context of Bilingual Secondary Education.” Williams used the term to describe the practice of using two languages in the same lesson, which differed from many previous methods of bilingual education that tried to separate languages by class, time, or day. More information about translanguaging can be seen in this video:

There are many advantages to using translanguaging pedagogy. First of all, the goal of including translanguaging as an aspect of second-language acquisition pedagogy is to move beyond sentence-level and grammatical concerns in second-language teaching strategies and to focus more heavily on discourse issues and on the rhetoric of communication. Students should be focused on the real applications of language that suit their purposes of communication based on the context in which they are communicating, rather than a one-variety-fits-all mode of learning the language. Reinforcing only English in academic situations is disadvantageous for students since students will ultimately encounter many varied communicative contexts, and as society becomes more digitally advanced, many of those communicative contexts will be transnational.

Apart from this, students will always reference what they already know from their first language when working with a second language. This helps students process the information and improve communication in their second language. Take me as an example, my mother tongue is Chinese, when I tried to learn Japanese, translanguaing is of great help to me. Since Chinese and Japanese share many similarities in vocabulary, like 手纸vs手紙，人间vs人間，翻译vs 翻訳, I can use my L1 knowledge to better understand my L2 language. As a result of using this translanguaging pedagogy, I become one of the best Japanese learners in school.

Question:

Are there any teaching strategies can teachers use to better facilitate translanguaing pedagogy?

References:

Wei, L. (2017). Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics, 39(1), 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amx039

Vernacular Language, Language Varieties, and their Deserved Place in Education

Written by Alison D.

One can arguably say that we all speak our own version of a given language. As social beings, we are influenced by our peers, our elders, our environment, as well as other languages in our language repertoires to contribute to the way we speak. As we explore the idea of dialects, tongues, and Vernacular forms of the English language, it is eminent for us to take a moment to explore how these comes to be, how they are continuously reinforced, as well as what can we do as language specialist to perhaps halter the divide and social-status attribution to particular forms of language.

Van Herk (2017) mentions in his work that “Geographical location is probably the most-studied social factor affecting language variation” (p.27). That said, depending on where we are located physically, our language variety will change. As we are highly influenced by the way people around us speak, it is only natural for the way we speak to change depending on where we are. This phenomenon also applies to children! Before the age of 4, children are almost exclusively spoken to, thus linguistically influenced, by their parents. Their parents’ languages and variations which are affected by geographical location, are thus passed down to their children (Tagliamonte and D’Arcy, 2009).

If you take a moment to reflect on this, our kindergarten learners often come to school at the age of 5 never having had language experiences other than immediate family. Thus, the varieties and Vernacular languages are simply the languages that they speak! Educators, then become language models and evaluators of children who speak unique forms of languages. Though, the educators in question, do not always value these Vernacular languages and varieties the same way they would value ‘standard’ languages.

The idea of a standardized or ‘ideal’ form of English dates back many years. Typically, the standardized form of a language is associated with users of a higher social class. Examples such as highly regarded occupation and income will be associated with individuals who speak a more ‘ideal’ and ‘recognized’ form of language. ‘Non-Native-like’ speakers of English, such as second language learners and speakers of Vernacular languages in such contexts are often faced with instances of insubordination and unequal treatment due to the difference in the way they speak. This relationship of ‘ideal’ languages versus ‘other languages’ tends to reinforce the hierarchal division of society based on social class.

Even when I think about students in my high school classroom, they are speaking in such unique ways. Their ways of expressing themselves, their slang, word choice, intonation and overall linguistic behaviour reminds me every day why I love teaching secondary English. This said, since I have gotten to know my learners quite well, I can expect certain variations of English from certain students, while different forms of English from others. I, however, cannot expect a particular learner to speak more like one of their peers. This would be taking away from their individuality as well as right to express themselves the way that best fits their identities. If promoting a safe space where students can express themselves comfortably is the goal, where is the line drawn? At assessment? For oral presentations? Does it have to be drawn at all? Is there a way for all variations and forms of language to be valued and celebrated in the classroom?

Regarding the place of English Vernaculars in education, perhaps a shift from using English to ‘move up in the world’ towards a focus on intelligibility and open communication can be a good starting point to having language learners and users embrace their individuality to richen their repertoires. Educators can then ponder on “what does it mean to be a language speaker” as well as what the actual goal for language learning is, instead of focusing on creating the most ‘native-like’ English speakers. Additionally, reconsidering evaluation methods could strengthen this shift but, alas! We can explore this topic another time.

Take a moment to view Morgan Gill’s take on African American Vernacular English and it’s place in Education.

References:

Ramanathan, V. (2005). The english-vernacular divide : postcolonial language politics and practice (Ser. Bilingual education and bilingualism, 49). Multilingual Matters.

Tagliamonte, S., & D’Arcy, A. (2009). Peaks beyond phonology: Adolescence, incrementation, and language change. Language, 85(1), 58-108. https://mcgill.on.worldcat.org/oclc/5791997425

Van Herk, G. (2017) What is Sociolinguistics? Linguistics in the world. Wiley Blackwell.

Multiplayer Gaming and ESL

Marina Koutsis

Learning English as a child was not my favourite activity as I saw it as invasive and unnecessary. I did not know anyone who was anglophone and thus could not imagine how English would become useful to me. Nevertheless, my parents and the education system compelled me to learn it. As a result, I was very resistant and put little effort into my English classes. This vision changed when I started playing World of Warcraft; a multiplayer online role-playing game in English. I initially managed to get by with my limited knowledge of English, but kept wondering if there was a French version of the game that I could play instead. I had always been aware of strong English influences around Québec which I perceived as negative and contrary to my francophone roots.

However, little by little, I started learning more words and I understood that the English language was not inherently bad. Instead, learning a new language opened up so many other possibilities for me, such as being fully immersed in media, from video games to films, in their original language and being able to communicate with other players. My resistance to English had to do with external dominating forces that threatened my first language, that is French, but it did not mean that learning a language could not be inherently good. Playing a video game enhanced my understanding of language learning and improved my skills in English. The game presented me with new vocabulary that was not only game-related but also included words that could be used in everyday life. As proposed by the International Center for Language Studies (2021), video games can complement the traditional methods used in language learning whilst promoting increased engagement and motivation in learners (https://www.icls.edu/video-games-help-people-to- learn-a-new-language/). In other words, gaming is an entertaining way of practising the challenging endeavour that is language learning, which was my experience.

The following image displays a typical game Quest. The writing is usually formal and integrates both game-related and everyday vocabulary words. Usually, quest descriptions contain important information about location. This meant that I had no choice but to read these descriptions in order to complete the tasks. These helped to enhance my understanding of and my reading skills in English. It also encouraged me to look up new words, thus broadening my vocabulary.

Video games offer unique opportunities to build knowledge and to build the confidence to interact with others, thus developing language skills in a motivating and entertaining way. Playing a video game allowed for my language learning to become a positive experience, rather than something that was forced upon me in school. Instead of remaining opposed to language learning, I now value linguistic development and am proud of understanding five languages. However, I have done so without forgetting my culture and whilst still being aware of the linguistic inequalities that persist in many communities around the world. I am glad to have had the opportunity to learn English in the most motivating and entertaining way, through a game that contributed to my love for languages and I hope that other Quebeckers have the opportunity to appreciate English as I do.

Has anyone else experienced language learning in an entertaining way?

Reference

ICLS: International Center for Language Studies. (2021). Video games help people to learn a new language. ICLS. https://www.icls.edu/video-games-help-people-to-learn-a-new-language/

Linguistic experiences in Montreal

Chuanmei Lin

I came to Montreal at the end of August and has been living here for a month. Before that I’ve never been to the French-speaking province of Quebec. Not sure if it’s the one-month “honey moon phase” in the culture shock model but it hasn’t faded away, I have been liking it here since I arrived. When I decided to come to McGill, I joked to my friend that I plan to speak English and Chinese in Montreal, and he joked that I will probably be speaking French and Chinese in Quebec, or at least need to have an A1/A2 level of French to live there. I didn’t understand what he meant, because I heard that in Montreal “everyone is bilingual”. I figured, if I speak English I can easily navigate my everyday life. After I arrived, I realized maybe he was right. In a grocery store downtown, an older staff didn’t understand me when I was looking for “noodles”, I was thinking “did I pronounce it wrong?”. Then a younger staff said something in French to the older staff so that he could show me the location of noodles. Another time I walked to an ice cream shop and realized that the menu was in French, so I had to point to the picture to get an ice cream because I couldn’t read it. Like the elderly women participants described their illiteracy in English under the increasingly globalized Korea, “illiteracy in English is the new illiteracy” (Lee, 2016, p.333). In Quebec, illiteracy in French is the new illiteracy, even though I’m living in Montreal where about 80% of Anglophones in Quebec live (Gérin- Lajoie, 2011, 2016, 2019). Although I learnt French at Alliance francaise Calgary https://www.afcalgary.ca for half a year (1-2 classes per week), I didn’t really take in much. It was supposed to be an immersion program but I was trying to get the teacher to explain the grammar in English. Using English (my L2) to learn French confuses me all the time and I wonder if the teacher explained French in Mandarin Chinese (my L1), might I learn better?

References

Gérin-Lajoie, D. (2011). Youth, language and identity: Portraits of students from English-language high schools in the Montreal area. Canadian Scholars’ Press.

Gérin-Lajoie, D. (2016). Negotiating identities: Anglophones teaching and living in Quebec. University of Toronto Press.

Gérin-Lajoie, D. (2019). Le rapport à l’identité des jeunes des écoles de langue anglaise au Québec. Presses de l’Université Laval, Collection Langues officielles et sociétés.

Lee, J. S. (2016). “Everywhere you go, you see English!”: Elderly women’s perspectives on globalization and English. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 13(4), 319-350.

English and globalization: a double-edged sword

Jundong Ma

Just as Lee (2016) described in the paper “Everywhere You Go, You See English!”: Elderly Women’s Perspectives on Globalization and English, as an Asian country, China also faces the same dilemma as Korea. In the 1990s, globalization began to sweep the whole world. Here is a short video that explains the procedure.

Countries started collaborating with one another during the globalization movement in both the technical and commercial spheres. Language also began to expand at the same time. English became a lingua franca since the United States and Great Britain dominated the global economy and English is their native tongue. English has been made a required course in Chinese classrooms in order to keep up with the globalization trend, and those who speak the language fluently may be considered “well-educated” individuals. Although globalization and the English learning boom brought many advantages, they also gave rise to numerous social issues.

On the one hand, Chinese people accept that globalization is necessary and that it can benefit China in many ways (job possibilities, technological advancement, capital inflow, etc.); on the other hand, many underprivileged Chinese people are left behind during the process. Elderly persons, members of the working class with low incomes, and youngsters with limited access to English instruction may find it difficult to keep up with the changes in the world because they are unable to grasp anything written in English. Sometimes they can even question why they are required to study a foreign language in their own nation. When I worked as an intern teacher during my undergraduate program, I saw that some students lacked the drive to learn English, but due to globalization’s quick expansion, they were forced to do so in order to keep up with the times and enrol in a reputable university. Therefore, to some extent, globalization disrupted the social ecology of several developing nations, and the English language started to cause problems for the locals.

In the end, I want to say that this is of great educational significance to us for it reminds us that, as a researcher, you cannot only pay attention to privileged groups, you have to think of those underprivileged people at the same time.

Questions:

What can we do to strike a balance between English learning boom and the safeguarding of local languages in developing nations?

References:

Lee, J. S. (2016). “Everywhere you go, you see English!”: Elderly women’s perspectives on globalization and English. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 13(4), 1–32. https://doi-org.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/10.1080/15427587.2016.1190654

Explainitychannel. (2013, July 11). Globalization explained (explainity® explainer video) [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ0nFD19eT8

“Is my English negatively affected by my Chinese Dialect?” The Incorporation of Chinese Dialects into English Learning Process

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.

Deliberate Mismatch of Home and School Languages

Tianyi Long

Van Hertz (2018) discussed language mismatch of students in educational systems, stating that in communities, bilingual communities as an example, students may use different languages in their homes and schools. Such phenomena were assumed to be negative, preventing students (especially for working class students) from achieving academic success and endangering the trust of parents in the educational system. However, my engagement with my local communities provides examples on another possible attitude of the language mismatch: students or their families are eager to abandon their own language features to cope with that of the educational system. Moreover, this attitude is most likely to happen among working class or immigrant families.

It is important to note firstly, that today’s society still tends to regard some languages, registers, or speaking varieties as “more valued” than others. The word “valued” here means speakers of those languages are usually seen to have a higher social status and/or have easier access to social resources. Languages used in educational systems are either an approximation of such valued languages, or at least a necessity for higher education which is also largely associated with social resources. Bearing these in mind, you may find my observations below are actually understandable:

There are occasions when families, usually from the working class or having a lower social status, feel the urge to shape their children’s language competence (or repertoire) to approximate those valued languages. Further, they are willing to abandon their home languages or their features in order to achieve this.

For example, the Ningbo dialect spoken in my hometown is quite different from Mandarin, the Standard Chinese. Many people of the older generation, who speak the Ningbo dialect as their L1, deliberately expose children to, and communicate with them in Mandarin, which is also the language of schooling. In some families (mine included), parents use dialects for communication with each other, but talk to the children in Mandarin, resulting to an imbalanced distribution of language competence of the children, who usually end up being able to listen and comprehend, but not to speak.

The top concerns of those families are firstly to accommodate children into schooling system as smoothly as possible, and to erase possible influences of dialect on children’s Mandarin accent so that to they may sound more “decent”, or more “local” in the cases of immigrant families.

Whilst this attitude facilitates students’ language learning at school in general, and is therefore regarded as “positive”, or neutralised as “strong learning motivation”, we can see there are hidden dangers. First, the epistemology behind such an attitude tends to be purely pragmatic, where the values of schooling and language learning are most likely to be reduced to a pure tool for obtaining social resources. Individual development, therefore, is diminished (for example, it does happen that the only expectation of some students with respect to education is obtaining a degree). Second, abandonment of the home languages is often accompanied by the abandonment of student’s ethnic or regional identity, and can be seen as a micro-scoped “colonisation”, as conquering occurs when the major, dominant identity replaces and erases the minor, marginalised one.

Do you have similar observations in your learning/teaching/living community? Leave a comment and let me know!

References:

Van Herk, G.(2018). What is sociolinguistics? (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.

Internet, technology and language learning

Radon.

It is noticeable that, computer technology and its derivation — the internet has played an increasingly indispensable role in language teaching and learning (Mike, 1996). Before, they were more often regarded as supplementary tools to classroom teaching. Whereas, no one would have foreseen that, the unexpected covid-19 pandemic has catapulted the online platform and the other digital resources into the primary media for education. People use technology and the internet more than ever in educational activities at this particular moment and I am no exception. In the past few months, I have personally experienced a lot with teaching and also being taught through this virtual world, which provokes me to reconsider the impacts exerted by these online tools, specifically on language learning.

Education vector created by pikisuperstar – www.freepik.com

I believe that most of us have in a sense benefited from internet recources while learning a language. In the midst of the pandemic, internet and technology enables us to continue acquiring the knowledge that we need in a safer way and guarantees a certain intake of social interaction, despite that it takes some time to familiarize ourselves with multifarious functions. During quarantine, I appreciated that I registered in an online French course, which empowered me to learn French and converse with others. In doing so, I made good use of my time without going out. Furthermore, the internet in general is not only informative (Koua, 2013) but also quite up to date. Notably, the internet is in fact changing the way people speak and even creating new words. For instance, it has contributed to the prosperity of English Text Speak characteristics of abbreviations or acronyms and even non-standard grammar. ASAP (as soon as possible), OMG (oh my God), BTW (by the way) are some telling examples. Besides, myriads of popular words in fact originated from the internet, such as selfie, tweet, hashtags, etc. The traditional textbooks, conversely, fail to provide all these present-day and practical usages of language.

Nevertheless, the internet and technology do not solely generate positive effects. My deepest impression so far is that the cyber world is also undermining the way we internalize knowledge. Take spelling as an example: in July and August of this year, I voluntarily taught English in the House of Friendship (HoF), a charitable organization in Montreal. Again, due to the pandemic, everything had to be performed online. I observed the high accuracy of spelling in the students’ e-version assignments in Word, whereas many more spelling mistakes were discovered in their final exam on Google Forms. My assumption was that the keyboard didn’t correct their spelling automatically in Google Forms, so that students’ actual mastery of spelling was exposed. Actually, it is not merely happening to these beginner-level language learners. The proficient ones and even native speakers are also experiencing the same. Think it over: Do you turn on the “auto-correction” function in your smartphone or use any grammar-check software like “Grammarly” on your computer? Have you ever been in a dilemma where you forgot the correct spelling of a frequently used vocabulary item when you try to write it down? If yes, you might be undergoing something similar to “character amnesia” in China. Unfortunately, the overdependence of technology and internet make us so stuck in the illusion of convenience that we are unaware that our actual knowledge is “getting stolen”.

Book vector created by pch.vector – www.freepik.com

The pandemic situation gives us no choice but to teach and learn primarily through online platforms and it is admittedly the most opportune solution for now. But when it is over, will computer technology and internet remain the core educational methods? We might reconsider it.

Questions for further discussion:
Based on your experience, what’s the biggest drawback/benefit of online language learning and teaching?
As a language teacher, can you share your example of how to use the internet and computer technology to supplement your teaching in the off-line classroom?
What do you think language teaching and learning will be like when the pandemic is over?

References:

Koua, V. (2013). The internet in french language teaching and learning: positive and negative impacts. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3(4), 564–571. https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.3.4.564-571

Mike, D. (1996). Internet in the schools: A literacy perspective. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 40(1), 1-13.