Stephen van Vlack

Sookmyung Women`s University

Graduate School of TESOL

History of the English Language

Fall 2006

Week 10 - Answers

Canagarajah (1999) Chapter 4

1. What are some of the domains and influences on the English as a foreign language classroom?

Canagarajah (1999) lists several different groups or agencies which seem to have every large effect on the English language classroom. The important point that Canagarajah has tried to make is that all these different influences somehow converge in the classroom. Therefore a simple discussion of some of these different forces is zealously necessary for understanding the challenges that teachers face in the classroom. These challenges obviously go way beyond just dealing with students, particularly in a sensitive subject like English.

The different groups that Canagarajah (1999) mentions are:

-State agencies

-Community interest groups

-Educational institutions

-Professional circles

-Research and educational institutions

-Cultural and funding agencies

-Publishing and commercial agencies

In South Korea today we can probably identify quite quickly which of these have the greatest effect. It is important to remember as well the social dynamic in the classroom from these agencies it’s constantly changing. We could probably argue that in the past cultural and funding agencies may have played a larger role, the Peace Corps for example, while publishing and commercial agencies played a lesser role, particularly when we think about publishers outside Korea.

As always, state agencies play an extremely important role in what actually ends up happening in the English language classroom. This is done not only through the publishing agencies, but also through the state-run evaluation system which may very well have the largest effect on English language classrooms across the country, at least up until and through the secondary level. The state even go so far as to dictate which methodologies and approaches teachers should be employing by issuing mission statements every five years. Teachers are assessed (supposedly) based on their conformance or lack thereof to the details stated in the mission statements.

In stark contrast to what comes in the state agencies we have community interest groups, or what in Korea is usually seen as being a parent groups, but really has more to do with just individual parents. These parental groups often act as a check on what is occurring in the classroom and how it is occurring. Over the years parents have become increasingly vocal and demanding about English education and inflict their own largely uninformed opinions about teachers, but also the state-stipulated goals not on the state itself but on the teachers and their own children. This gives parental groups a huge amount of power. This power can be used to either support or supplant what the teacher does in the classroom.

The individual educational institutions, although they might somehow seem tied by the government regulations, often interpret the state-inspired mission statements quite differently. Some schools will apply the statements with great accuracy and vehemence while others simply and virtually neglect them. This is obviously a further cause of possible tension in the classroom, particularly as teachers are forced to move schools every five years.

Canagarajah (1999) lists professional circles as being somewhat further out in the periphery than maybe some of these others because in reality, and particularly in Korea, the work of professional circles have not yet played a very important role on what goes on in the classroom. While the amount of publication as well as the quality of the publications from these professional circles has increased their separateness from the government has led many of these publications to simply be ignored when the government is seeking to create new mission statements. There has also been a certain amount of favoritism in this area wherein government agencies will only ask specific professionals their opinions. At the higher level, for example teach training such as this program, the role of these professional organizations is more valued and important, but the information often does not trickle down into the classroom, or does so at a rather slow pace.

Similar to what was mentioned above, the role of research and educational institutions often takes place at a higher level and therefore the trickle-down is often less. These types of institutions obviously played important role in teacher training, and increasingly in Korea in retraining, but there is no guarantee that the already mentioned factors will actually allow the teachers to use many of the ideas which they have been trained on.

Publishing and commercial agencies now play a rather important role in the Korean English teaching situation. As a wealth of the nation has risen Korea has become a major market for overseas publishers. Koreans not only have the money, but are willing to spend the money on all sorts of materials, provided they think they will help them learn English. This has led to a dramatic influx of materials from overseas. Local materials must therefore also change under this influence. These look of materials are not only those produced by independent publishing companies but also books created for and sanctioned by the government for use in classrooms all over the country. These influences are not only in the design of the books but also in the content and methods used with these books.

Looking all these things together we see what a dramatic variety of influences there are on your average English-language teacher. One factor which Canagarajah (1999) does not mention at all, presumably because this is not yet come to Sri Lanka as though role that other language teaching institutions play. When this is factored in we get even more conflict. Teachers somehow need to try to balance all these different things and it is not hard to see that there are many conflicting ideas which are hurled at teachers from different directions. For this reason it might not be too surprising to find that the teacher satisfaction rate is rather low and the attrition rate is correspondingly rather high. The bottom line is that we said we have not yet found an adequate local version of English language teaching for us here.

2. How can EFL textbooks be a source of tension?

A textbook can and often it is a loaded weapon, particularly dangerous in the hands of certain individuals who use it without careful contemplation. This seems to be true in Sri Lanka and we know it is certainly true in Korea. Here we can make a sharp distinction between primary and secondary education and postsecondary education. The core materials for primary and secondary education are often locally produced (supplementary materials, however, are invariably from outside) while those for postsecondary education are often produced outside. This means that the primary and secondary education materials strongly reflect the goals of the government. Post secondary materials reflect aspects of Western culture such as were described in this chapter of Canagarajah. The important thing to remember is that these books are never really benign, although they often seek to be. The choice of the methods to be employed, the vocabulary present, and particularly the texts all present a view of the world which may very well vary from that of the students. Particularly, but certainly not exclusively, in Korea in the speaking societies and English speakers themselves are often shown in stark contrast to Koreans. Quite paradoxically one of the goals of these books at the secondary and pre-secondary levels to try to instill in a students a sense of national pride and patriotism, and this is supposed to be achieved through the learning of English and sometimes unfair comparisons to other cultures. Teachers need somehow to find ways to diffuse this tension. The only way of doing this is to go carefully through the texts and refute or challenge themselves what is presented there. Teachers need to guide the students in seeking alternatives to certain aspects of the book that need to supplement books quite carefully. If these measures are not taken students end up doing some of these things for themselves as we see in the answer to the next question.

3. How do student deal with this tension or otherwise oppose hegemony in the EFL classroom?

It may be due to strong hierarchical aspects of Korean culture, but in general we do not see the type of resistance to some of these aspects of English language teaching which Canagarajah (1999) mentions in this chapter among Korean students. Usually the strongest response we find from students is to simply reject the English learning process or certain aspects of this. Students will tune out or give up on English in general despite the great rewards which may be accrued from doing well in English. Others will change their focus away from what is going on in the classroom and more or less hijacked their own learning process and in doing so may become very successful. Writing comments in the book and asking questions does sometimes come but often not from the weaker students but from the stronger students who have actually gone further along in English-only process than the teachers often have and challenge the teachers based not on a localist view but on a view as an English speaker. This generally seems to be the greatest time of challenge the teachers are at least aware of in the classroom.

Kecskes and Papp 2000, Chapter 2

1. How do the authors propose the L2 to affect the L1?

Rather than proposing that foreign language exposure might have an effect on L1 forms themselves, as we know is often the case in exposure from L1 to L2 or FL, Kecskes and Papp propose that an FL might affect cognition and such affects or will impact on how the L1 is used in cognitively demanding situations like reading and especially writing/composing. It is also important to understand that in this proposal language and cognition are indelibly intertwined. One exists with the other. The basic idea is that language use is controlled at least in part by cognition or conceptual structures. Thus, conceptual structures provide the basis of all language use and to be able to use language effectively we need to be able to control more and more varied and increasingly abstract conceptual structures. In this proposal they are claiming that learning a foreign language allows one to awaken/reawaken, if not exactly learn, certain (abstract) conceptual structures which have lay dormant and that these conceptual structures will then be able to heighten elements of language use for all languages involved in the conceptual network. In this sense Kecskes and Papp are being extremely cautious. It is highly possible that a second or foreign language might affect a first language in a variety of ways and certainly on cognition but not only on cognition but on meaning and even forms as well (See Cook, 2003). This is an idea we will return to later in this course. To understand exactly the hypothesis of the current research we need to first understand the nature of written speech and how it might vary from spoken language.

2. What is written speech and how is it developed and how does it work?

Written speech is basically a fancy expression for writing. It differs from speaking in that it is not reactive, it is at least a delayed reaction and at most a highly planned and carefully constructed instance of language use. The chief difference between speaking and writing, then, is seen at the level of planning, the level of control, and the thought which goes into each written utterance. Written speech varies not only in the way the forms are put together, but also in the forms themselves. It exists, therefore, on two different levels: the planning level and the form level. It is important to recognize that these two levels are not mutually exclusive, they are constantly interacting with each other. The more one is able to plan, the more complex their utterances are going to be. Likewise, the more one is able to put together complex utterances with ease the greater they are going to be able plan their utterances. It is widely acknowledged in literacy circles that language forms and planning do actually go together in that they affect each other greatly.

In a regular naturalistic language learning cycle written speech is developed as a later abstraction from pre-existing spoken forms. We take the basic ideas of the spoken forms (the underlying conceptual structures) and extend them into more abstract realms. One of these chief methods of extension is through fusion and linking. We know that written speech is much more efficient than speaking and that more meaning is contained within a shorter span of language because more complex connections exist between the different units. By fusing concepts and linking these concepts linguistically we are able to create much more complex ideas in a shorter linguistic space. Maybe a simple example will make this clearer.

(1) Unbelievable though it may seem because of his sweet demeanor Harry is the man who did kill and eat my dog at my last fancy dress ball.

(2) I had a fancy dress ball. It was not very long ago that I had this fancy dress ball. To this fancy dress ball I invited a man named Harry. I liked Harry. I thought that Harry was a man of sweet demeanor. Many other people agreed with me. He wasn`t. At the fancy dress ball he killed my dog. He also ate my dog. I think it is unbelievable.

Looking at these examples above we can contrast the seeming simplicity of (1) against the strange ramblings of (2). We can see how by carefully planning our utterances at both levels we can write much more effectively than we can actually speak. To do so requires more cognitive control. To be a good writer of a language one needs to have control over many different formal elements of that language. This is basically the hypothesis or proposal that Kecskes and Papp are making for this study. They are claiming, and in actually a very conservative way, that learning a foreign language helps us master or relearn some of the formal elements (the elements/concepts used for written speech) of our native language. This comes about, they claim, because foreign languages are taught in a formal way. When we learn a foreign language we do not really learn how to speak and we are really not exposed to spoken forms of that language. Rather, all we are really introduced to is written speech albeit in the mode of actually speaking. When we study grammar formally in a foreign language situation we are not really learning the grammar of the spoken language (which varies dramatically from that of written forms) but we are really studying the grammar of written speech. This is why this transfer may occur.

3. Briefly outline the design of the experiment.

The experiment has four different variables in its design.

First is the different situations in which the subjects are placed - immersion, intensive, and control.

While we are all aware that immersion programs have been touted as effective situations for second or foreign language learning it might at first seem very strange that an immersion situation would result in better usage patterns in the first language. This is because, as is also present in this study, the subjects are actually exposed to less of their first language in an immersion situation. We might therefore hypothesize that the immersion group subjects would actually lose certain skills in their native language, in this case Hungarian. For the intensive group we would possibly hypothesize the best affects because not only are they getting a large amount of input and instruction in their first language but they are also getting a quite large or as the name implies fairly intensive amount of instruction and input in the foreign language, in this case either Russian or English. Control groups are always control groups - we expect little to happen to them.

The second variable in this experiment is the timing of the different tests - X, nine months later, 12 months later. The timing here is the simple timing that we would find in a standard longitudinal type study. In such studies there needs to be a certain amount of time between testing instances for development to occur. If there is no timing between the different tests then there might not be any measurable differences simply because the subjects have not had enough time to acquire any new skills.

The third variable present in the design is the tasks - familiar essay, unfamiliar essay, picture-based story L1 + FL, advertisement. This last task is a little bit strange and the authors themselves acknowledge this fact. It would seem that the final task would require or under normal circumstances call for a more informal type of writing and that most writers would not include very many subordinate clauses or sophisticated grammar in such a task. I`m wondering why this was put as the final task, because at this point we would assume that we would want a task that would call for a possibly larger number of complex structures. This could be a certain flaw in their design, or at least it makes the results a little bit harder to interpret I think.

The fourth variable is the evaluation of the tasks - Frequency Index, Unusual Subordinations, Loban Index, Loban number. What all this basically boils down to, fancy and complicated though it may seem, is the idea that complex language requires more cognitive control. Based on this, all these different measurement tools are designed to evaluate different types of complexity in the forms used by the subjects in the different tasks. Each one has a slightly different focus so that the researchers can see which different aspects of complex structure seemed to be easier or less easy for different subjects to produce on different tasks. As we often see, the results on different tasks will result in the production of different types of complexity from the subjects. It is hard to say at this point if the experiment design is possibly a bit overly complicated, but in the end the results do emerge and rather clearly.

4. What are the results of the experiment?

The results showed that exposure to an FL does seem to affect usage in the L1, even where the students are getting less exposure to the L1. It seems that FL exposure activates passive knowledge in the L1 which is beneficial in writing. This is pretty much what they expected to find and in fact they do find it, but of course a certain amount of exposure (A threshold level of exposure seems to be) is required for these results to occur. The control group did not have these kind of affects so as we find with general bilingual development a threshold level of exposure seems to be required for positive aspects of bilinguality to come into play. These results also point to the specific notion that different languages are interrelated. This is a very important conclusion and is one which will be discussed at great length more next week.

5. How would you interpret the results? Does your interpretation vary from that of the authors?

There are many different ways of actually interpreting these results. One of the key issues in this study is the age of the participants. The success of the study is really related to the participants themselves. If the study had been done with people who were three years younger or three years older the results might not have been the same, or at least not quite as uniform as they were. Younger subjects who had not yet completed some of their basic cognitive development might have actually shown some negative effects on their Hungarian as a result all the increased exposure to other languages and diminished exposure to their own first language as in the immersion group. Older learners who had, to a certain extent, already mastered some of the specific cognitive elements related to composition in the L1 might not show strong results because they don`t need to learn those aspects. So the results are not quite as simple as they might appear. They are however compelling in that we can see that a well developed and carefully constructed bilingual program, or a program of intense foreign language instruction, provided at the right time in a learners development will have beneficial effects on not just one language system but on all the different language systems contained. This is really nice for our as people who are language learners/teachers and bi-multilinguals. Again, this is an idea we will return to later in this course.