Week 9

"A Sociolinguistically Based, Empirically Researched Pronunciation Syllabus for English as an International Language"
Jennifer Jenkins

In this article, Jenkins talks about how teachers, and learners, try to have the student achieve an accent identical to that of a native speaker. But in EIL she says, teaching and speaking is based on a global scale, so the learner will speak with their own accent, not the one assigned to them. There is a fear that the language, since it is so widely used by non-native speakers, may break up into dialects that are unintelligible to others. This issue is caused by the teaching of the phonics. Jenkins gives five examples of this miscommunications she has taken from her field study. She shows the different phonological sounds made by different L2 learners from many different countries. Jenkins states that when non native speakers talk they focus on what the other is saying and the sounds, not necessarily asking what they mean. The example is given of the two NNS using cards in an exercise. Even though they have been doing this exercise for weeks, there is still a breakdown in the R and L sounds. They are too focused on choosing the right words and trying to understand the other that they are still miscommunicating. In another study, there was evidence of consonant deletion. These examples show how the breakdown of the language can occur, and why there is a fear of English being spoken everywhere but not understood.
Jenkins then talks about the issue of having the same L1 learners in the classroom. This could result in a shared mispronunciation. This may not be a bad thing she notes, they will share a common accent, and the only other accent they will hear will be from their teacher. She explores the idea that the best teacher in this case would be a bilingual who shares the students first language. This way the teacher will know the accent of the learners and how to teach them properly.
I think the idea of having a non native speaker teach an English class with people from their own culture is a good idea. I think this would improve on their ability to learn, but at the same time, things they have learned that are not correct will be passed down to their students. When this happens it is hard for other teachers, a native English speaker for example, to fix this problem. The students may then believe, because they were taught by someone from their own culture, that the wrong way is correct. The fear of the accent changes is also an issue. If more people became fluent and have different accents this could pose a serious problem with the spread of English. If these people became teachers and taught with the accent, their students may try to copy it, and assume it was correct. There are many problems with this issue that could drastically hurt the English language, leaving it, possibly, unrecognizable.

Week 7

Japanese Culture Constructed by Discourses: Implications for Applied Linguistics Research and ELT

Ryuko Kubota

This article examines many ideas of how culture plays a role in learning and in the world. Kubota begins by giving examples of how culture is used in the classroom. Whether a student should bring their culture with them into the classroom and how this is treated by the teachers and schools. As a Japanese woman Kubota, is trying to just lay out the idea of culture, I do not think she is trying to take a side.
She talks about the idea that Japanese culture does not include self-expression in the classroom. This is later shown to be false in some ways. In elementary schools and preschools self-expression is used regularly. This is not the case in Japanese secondary schools, where memorization is key educational tool. while this is not the case, the students to have many activities after school that do us self-expression. Also, Kubota talks about the group goals of Japanese culture. That all their activities are group oriented and not for the individual, and that the West all activities are for the individual. This shows that Western culture is about self interest, we do things to better ourselves not the group.
Kubota states that the way we learn our first language is reflected in how we approach our second language learning. In this case the teacher should teach or at least try to teach for towards what the students expect in their culture. They should recognize how they behave and use this as a teaching tool. At the same time, she says that we must realize not all people are the same in their culture, even in the same cultures. So one Japanese person may have a different view of culture from another.
The idea of Othering comes into this article also. The example of women as others is also explored here. Western authority says that they are one thing and we are the other. The phrase Extending Knowledge is presented here as a Western idea that in the west we are constantly reconstructing our knowledge and coming up with new things in our culture. But in the East they have Conserving Knowledge where their knowledge of things are preserved and they do not use new ideas in their culture.
More ideas of Japanese culture are then described and the research of how self-expression is presented here. She shows how they are a free thinking culture and they do come up with new knowledge. Also, she describes how Westernization is taking Japanese identity but they are now forming new identities.
I think this article explored some ideas I had not thought of before. For instance how Westernization was taking their identity away. I knew that Westernization was, in my opinion, not a great thing, but I never thought about it in those terms. I think we need to teach towards cultures in our classrooms. I think we need to find a common ground between our students and ourselves and try to use that to become better teachers. The students will benefit greatly if they can bring parts of themselves and their cultures to the classroom. They will have a much better learning experience, in my opinion.

Week 6

Borrowing Others' Words: Text, Ownership, Memory, and Plagiarism
Alastair Pennycook

In this article Pennycook lays out the idea of plagiarism and how words are borrowed. This idea of an author is also placed here. In the first section he describes his own experience in China. He states that when he asked his students to write a paper about someone they knew well, someone wrote about Abraham Lincoln. This struck him as strange and he then found out that it was almost word for word from a text book. He had a hard time with this because some of this other students had memorized this as well. This made him wonder how important memory was and when does a non native speaker form their own ideas of the language, when do they become creative?
He goes on to talk about the Western idea of creativity and constructing an author. He tries to explain what qualifies and author and how can we use the authors words when we write. He says this is a Western idea of creativity and the previous words the author has written. He uses the examples of the presidents who have said famous lines, but these lines were actually taken from former people in history. He then talks about the word of God, and how this is relevant.
Pennycook goes on to talk about hunting the borrowed words. He says "Western literary practices centre around the notion of the individual creator and yet constantly echo the lines of others, academic work also stresses the individual, creative thinker, and writer and yet constantly emphasizes a fixed cannon of disciplinary knowledge"(213). So this is a problem that has to constantly be dealt with. There is no straight line of right and wrong here. Some people view it as strait out stealing and some as borrowing.
Pennycook then describes the changes in writing that are taking place to avoid the entire idea of plagiarism. He talks about taking away I in our work. Instead of stating our own opinions we now use a reference to something instead of ourselves. The idea of self-plagiarism is also produced.
The issue with East and West is then addressed by Pennycook. He says that he is not making it West against East or vice versa. He is simply telling us how it is different in his experiences in China and Hong Kong. The rules do not seem to be so black and white here. One student told him that she was not taught the rules of plagiarism in secondary school and this is why she did not know them. He concludes by saying that we must be more open minded as teachers and realize what our students have been taught and what their culture has taught them. Also, I think the rules of plagiarism must be shown to the student in specific terms.
The article was very informative overall. From the beginning I thought of the notion of non native speakers. I think that maybe we are quicker to judge them when they are writing and maybe look for plagiarism specifically. Pennycook makes it clear here that we must not do this, we must become familiar with their learning processes. If they memorize to learn, they may not understand the guidelines of plagiarism. We as teachers must make this clear to our students from day one of class. We must present our idea of what plagiarism is and steer the students away from this. Especially with zero tolerance being put in place at the university level.