Yesterday's class was an interesting and (I'm happy to say!) lively mix of old, new and the yet-to-be. I was especially intrigued by the 'English Corner' and 'English Zones' concepts (and related ideas such as Language Cafes) - these seem to be grassroots attempts to create a natural setting in which to use English, yet they are not problem-free, as we heard in class. Certainly these settings are potentially great sites for empirical research - we need to know what's going on, language-wise, within such settings: how talk is generated, how people organise their interactions in them, how people enter and leave them, and, of course, what the English looks like in such Corners/Zones. So if you have access to such settings, and are looking for an empirical project, this might be the setting for you to get working on!
We didn't get much of a chance to look at Kachru's '3 concentric circles' notion, which was a shame, because it's important in the development of International English/ELF scholarship. But there is a lot online for you to read - both in support of Kachru and against him - so do read up and around the topic, I'm sure it'll be very worthwhile and enlightening.
Our pidgin and creole discussions were good, and I was fascinated by the idea that English itself was, in some ways (though not in all!), a pidgin variety when it began to emerge in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D.
We circled around language planning - this is top-down management of language teaching, language policies, and so on. I think this 'top-down' dominated research field would benefit from being viewed from 'bottom-up' perspectives. Some questions worth considering would include the following:
- How are language policies (regarding English) experienced by language users?
- How are they responded and reacted to?
- How and why do certain language policies work whilst others don't?
- How do top-down language policy processes measure up to changing sociolinguistic realities?
- How useful are language policies in empowering people and improving their lives?
- How do language users' actions produce and reproduce, from the bottom up, larger sociolinguistic structures and patterns of multilingualism, both in time and in space?
Comments would be welcome, as always!
Several classmates have shared with me the view that this module is our favourite one, and Alan is our favourite tutor. We appreciate that Alan is showing us his own reflection on the sessions in this blog. But why don't you guys drop some lines here and give Alan some encouragement to carry on writing this blog? You see, he hasn't written a word here today...
ReplyDeleteVocabulary is the most essential element of communication. The more words you know, the more you can say and understand.As research has repeatedly shown that a language is learned most effectively when it is tied to meaningful content and adoptable usage for students’ lives, our English education should not just reside in the language teaching in an English immersion language classroom, but should be integrated in the rest of the curriculum.
ReplyDelete