Ch. 7 How Languages Are Learned

I found it interesting to revisit the 7 popular ideas about language learning in chapter 7 after having studied so many different approaches and research over the course of the semester. While I’m not sure if my opinion has necessarily changed, I do feel as though I have a deeper understanding of each idea.

This is especially true with the third idea—Highly intelligent people are good language learners. That is an idea that I’ve encountered quite often and I feel as though I finally have the tools to articulate why that assumption is not quite correct. Language learning is such a complex process; one that is undertaken in many different learning situations and for many different purposes. It is impossible to define one specific type of “good language learner” and “intelligence”, at least as it is conventionally thought of, is not the only factor.

The same is true of motivation. I agree that teachers have very little control over a student’s intrinsic motivation. All we can do is create the supportive environment they need and give them the tools to be successful. However all too often people think of a student as needing to be motivated to learn a language without recognizing the many complex issues that encompass “motivation”, especially as it applies to language learning. Students who are learning a second language, perhaps in a new country or a different cultural or linguistic community, face very different challenges than do children acquiring their first language, or even a student from the dominant language community learning a second language.

The idea I related to the most was 17—Students can learn both language and academic content simultaneously in classes where the subject matter is taught in their second language. I grew up in a Dual Language Program an experienced this approach first hand. However, I definitely encountered the challenges mentioned in the chapter. Especially because my class was the first in our district to have this program, the teachers were not quite sure how much explicit language instruction was needed and I have often felt that my Spanish has lacked in certain areas because of this. It is extremely important to incorporate some elements of form-focused instruction into these programs to ensure that students are learning all that they are supposed to.

Ch. 4 learning by doing part I

The first part of chapter 4 focuses on various theories of “learning by doing” from around the world. It also places these theories in the context in which they were formed in an attempt to enhance our understanding of them. First and foremost, the chapter asserts for learning to take place, students must “learn by doing”. It is not enough to simply study a language and it’s structures, but students must also engage in dialogue with L1 speakers, and actually speak the language they are attempting to learn to truly become proficient. I thought it was incredibly interesting that this idea of “learning by doing” was present in many different philosophies from various parts of the world.

            Wong explains the views of Marx, Mao, Freire, Dewey, and Bakhtinand while they each speak of learning by doing, they each have their own arguments for why. Mao’s thesis, for example, was that practice and knowledge reinforce each other because knowledge begins with experience. This clearly applies to language learning, as we have often discussed in class that to achieve maximum proficiency in a language, one must have experience utilizing it in realistic situations, whether that be in a study abroad experience or simply speaking with other speakers of the target language. Mao also believed in the social characteristics of school and moral education, and was critical of how knowledge was used, whether it was to empower the learners or to further oppress the lower classes.

            John Dewey also believed in the importance of learning by doing, however he was much more attached to Western science and philosophy. He believed in modeling education after the West, whereas Mao focused on social and political transformation through revolutionary struggle. I find it fascinating that both arrived at the idea of “learning by doing” and seemed to agree that it is central to education, though both arrived from very different starting points.

            I also thought the section on “claiming the right to speak” was important. In this section, Wong quotes a Bonny Norton article with which we are already familiar, and she brings up excellent points. It is extremely important when learning a language that students “learn by doing”. They must interact with the target language community so as to practice utilizing the target language and to increase their understanding of not only pragmatics, but the community in general. However, many factors can make this task much more difficult for the learner. If the learner is from a group that is considered more “vulnerable” or “powerless”, it can be more difficult for the learner to “claim the right to speak”. Wong used the example of Finnish students in Sweden and Australia. In Sweden, where they are discriminated against, the Finnish students tend to have less academic achievement than Finnish students in Australia who are seem as “good immigrants”. This is all despite the fact that Finnish is more similar to Swedish than it is to English. I find that fascinating, but also terrifying. It is awful to think that a student’s performance could be affected so severely by the dominant culture’s perception and treatment of the student’s cultural group. As educators we must be aware of how these kinds of factors can influence our students’ abilities not only in the classroom, but also their ability to claim their right to speak outside as well.

Alternative Assignment

Hiramoto, Mie. "Utterance Final Position and Projection of Femininity in Japanese."

Gender and Language 4.1 (2010): 99-124. Web.

Hiramoto found that higher vocal pitches and sentence-final particles are used to

highlight femininity in Japanese speech and this is a key feature of Japanese

women’s language (JWL). It is important to understand exactly which linguistic

features are associated with femininity and how they are utilized.

Hui-qing, L. I. "Study on Pragmatic Functions of Gender Terms in Japanese

            Conversation." Canadian Social Science 5.5 (2009): 48-54. Print.

            Hui-qing explores the pragmatics of gender terms in Japanese. Their use is both

flexible and an intentional strategy on the part of the speaker and is not

necessarily determined by the gender identity of the speaker. Understanding how

these gender terms can be used strategically could enable a more thorough understanding of how these concepts affect SLA.

Itakura, Hiroko. "Attitudes towards the Use of Masculine and Feminine Japanese among

            Foreign Professionals: What Can Learners Learn from Professionals?" Language,

Culture and Curriculum 22.1 (2009): 29-41. Print.

Itakura found that the gendered aspects of Japanese have posed problems for

learners of Japanese, specifically western female learners. The use of masculine

and feminine forms in Japanese demonstrates an expert linguistic and cultural

knowledge that is appreciated by native speakers, though it’s use by women

serves to reinforce their perceived subservient position. These findings have

implications not only for learners of Japanese, but also for anyone attempting to

learn gendered aspects of a language, as well as those attempting to teach these

aspects.

Nakamura, Momoko. "Masculinity and National Language: The Silent Construction of a

            Dominant Language Ideology." Gender and Language 2.1 (2008): 25-50. Print.

            Nakamura explores the history of masculinity in Japanese language. It stems from

the attempts in the late 19^th and 20^th centuries to build a Japanese nation-state with

a unified national language. It’s association with masculine speech, as well as the

asymmetrical relationship between “masculine” speech and “feminine” or

otherwise marginalized speech styles created the link between masculine speech

and national speech. Language are ever changing and evolving and it is important

to understand how historical events and power structures have helped shape

language.

Ch. 3 Problem Posing

            Chapter 3 focused on the concept of “problem posing” which I found extremely relevant to my stance as a future teacher. I have really enjoyed the dialogic approach but have always wondered exactly how my attempts to incorporate this into my future classroom will be and exactly how to go about doing this. “Problem posing” seems like a very effective way to encourage dialogue, participation, and active learning in students and my own experiences with this have been very encouraging.

            Wong explains that “problem posing” should be used instead of one-way transmission. The teacher should not simply give students information and leave it at that. Meaning should be co-constructed among students with the teacher serving as a guide. Teachers should also be flexible and modify their lessons based on the needs of students. While using the same approach every year with every group of students may feel more comfortable, it will not be as effective as when lessons are modified to address the individual needs and interests of each unique group of students.

           

            This can be difficult when it comes to the issue of high-stakes testing. It is tempting and sometimes required that teachers teach to the test. I have encountered this in my own experiences as a student. Teachers will drop what they are doing and simply teach the material that is going to be on whatever standardized test is on the horizon. This was not only painfully boring for me, but I truly believe I never learned a thing. I don’t remember a single concept from the skill and drill activities we did to prepare for the ISAT. What I do remember is what I learned from class discussions and projects that involved interacting with my peers and actively seeking out knowledge.

            However, in today’s society high-stakes testing and the repercussions of achievement on said tests are all too real for students. We cannot simply ignore these tests or assume that our teaching will eventually address the necessary concepts. Wong explains that teachers should be teaching beyond the test and encouraging students to utilize progressively more complex language. When concepts arise that will be on the test, teachers can note this to the students and teach them the necessary jargon they will need to know for the test, though the test need not be the main focus.

           

            An approach I especially liked regarding high-stakes testing was to pose the test itself as a problem to the students. I believe that students should be aware of the nature of standardized test, not just how they’re used, but also the inequalities they often support. If students are motivated to do well on these tests, they will have more opportunities to make their voices heard regarding the unequal power structures they have encountered and hopefully encourage change—“using the master’s tools to destroy the master’s house.”

            I also felt that the notions in the section on Feminist Problem Posing were especially important. We must always be aware that a great many voices have been excluded from societal dialogue throughout history. We are also now beginning to recognize the plurality of experience. A person’s experience is shaped by many factors that cannot be separated from one another. I as a white woman have experienced oppression in a way that is different from a woman of color or a woman with a disability, etc. When we fail to recognize these different experiences, we fail to truly understand the individual and what s/he knows.  This is evident in the findings of Carol Gilligan. She found that the children, Jake and Amy, were actually responding to different questions in the study on moral development. However, Amy was categorized as less mature because her answer did not apply to the question she was assumed to be answering. If we evaluate students based on universal standards that reflect male, western, or upper-middle-class norms, we will be dismissing the knowledge, experience, and value of too many students. Everyone’s experience and way of knowing is unique and formed based on many factors, including gender, class, race, sexual orientation, and others. We must approach our students based on their own individual histories and backgrounds if we hope to truly understand them and give them the tools to succeed.

Learning in Community

In chapter 2 of Dialogic Approaches to TESOL, Wong discusses the benefits and challenges that come with learning in a community. She begins by discussing the Socratic and Confuscian views on learning and connects them to our views and approaches to learning and teaching today. Socrates would use guiding questions to help his students “give birth” to ideas without simply telling them the answers. Confuscious focused on “learning to be human” and both he and Socrates believed that it is absolutely necessary that learning take place in a group, through more dialogic interactions. I absolutely agree with this because through my own personal experience, I have learned more through discussion and social interaction than through skill drills. Whether is be discussing a metaphor in a novel I read for and English class, or simply engaging in conversation in my L2, the lessons I’ve learned through those activities have had more of an impact.

I was already familiar with many of the topics discussed in this chapter through my education classes. I liked the example of using students’ funds of knowledge in the classroom. As teachers, we often forget to take stock of what knowledge students bring to the classroom already. Unfortunately, this can be exacerbated when the student is also learning English. It is easy to think that a student is struggling with a math problem because they have not yet learned long division, when the problem is actually that they do not understand the language. The chapter focused not only on that type of knowledge, but also on the types of knowledge that families possess that may be different. Children from working class families enter the classroom with different funds of knowledge than children from affluent families. One type of knowledge is not better than the other, but the way we approach these children can send a very different message. It is possible to make students feel that their home culture/background/knowledge/etc is not valued in the same way as that of other families and they may feel that to be considered “American” or a part of the group, they must deny their family and their background. To avoid this we can incorporate students’ funds of knowledge into classroom activities as they did in the book. By doing this students can see that their knowledge is useful and important and should be considered with pride rather than shame.

I was also familiar with reading and writing workshops both through personal experience and other classes. When I was in elementary school, my favorite part of the day was writing workshop. It was where I found my place among my classmates, as “the writer”. I would invent elaborate stories that included all of my classmates and we would go on outlandish adventures to outer space or sometimes just a friend’s house. Because I was in a dual language program, sometimes I would write in English but I would also write in Spanish. My favorite type of writing was by far the narrative, but we wrote many different kinds of papers. To me writing workshop was not only a creative outlet, but was also where I, as a rather shy child, found my voice. In the stories I wrote, the boy in class who was always picked on became a lawyer and was always bailing us out of jail or defending us in court when our shenanigans inevitably led to run ins with the law. That was my way of imagining and creating a fair end to what I was too shy to vocally label an unfair situation. My point through all this is that by giving students a creative outlet, whether it be reading books of their choosing or writing stories, they can find their voice in their L1 and L2, which can be especially important for students who because of societal power structures often feel stripped of their power and voice.

Political and Philosophical Roots of TESOL

The first part of this chapter that caught my attention was when Wong posed the question, “What purpose does education serve?”. She went on to question whether education should seek to replicate hierarchical social structures or to change them. We often do not consider how our classrooms can serve to reinforce oppressive social structures. We are appalled to hear that at one point in our nation’s history, it was considered appropriate to separate Native American children from their families and place them in boarding schools in an attempt to strip them of their culture. However, we do not consider how our classrooms today can still serve to reinforce the same oppressive standards that account for the fact that power is still concentrated in the hands of a small white, male, elite. Granting everyone access to knowledge and education is the key to realizing true democracy, where everyone has a voice and is heard.

I found the social focus of dialogic approaches very fascinating. I agree that learning a language is a social process. I believe that to learn a language a student must be able to interact with other speakers and actively construct their knowledge through these interactions. My most memorable and effective experiences learning languages have always consisted of utilizing the language in a social context and exploring what I knew, what I thought I might know, and what I thought I did not know. I also agree that to fully understand this process and maximize every student’s potential, we must take into consideration how power structures and politics enter our classrooms and counter any negative affects so as to allow all of our students a voice. I was once observing a Spanish class where when a student asked if a certain grammatical structure was correct, the teacher responded that while it is a structure that is found in conversation, saying it would come across as unintelligent. I immediately wondered what the effect of that statement would be for the students in the class for whom Spanish was an L1 as well as those for whom it was an L2. Would the student’s whose family spoke Spanish feel ashamed or alienated if they felt the teacher had devalued their family’s dialect? Would the students learning Spanish as an L2 be afraid to take risks in their L2 for fear of sounding unintelligent? Or would they come to judge other speakers for utilizing “incorrect” grammar? Certain beliefs about language that are commonly taught, formally or informally, in the classroom are created and taught from a position of privilege and reflect inaccurate, or even prejudiced views of a language and its speakers.

Overall, I felt this chapter was extremely interesting and important. I feel as though this chapter has put a name to many practices I have experienced in my own life as a student and L2 learner. I have experienced both these approaches to language teaching, as well as observed how our classrooms can be used to either reinforce or minimize the effects of politics and power structures.

Good Language Learners and Social Identity in SLA

It is difficult to define exactly what a "good language learner" is. Researchers in SLA have been attempting to explain why some learners are more successful than others despite the fact that everyone is able to successfully acquire their L1 and achieve fluency. This is because while any type of language acquisition is a complex process, SLA is influenced by other factors such as age and "motivation", as well as sociocultural influences. However, as Bonnie Norton Pierce and Kelleen Toohey explain, factors beyond "motivation" play a role in SLA; specifically, sociocultural factors and the types of opportunities a learner's community/society offers her/him.

A study called The Good Language Learner, conducted in the mid 1970's,  determined that, "adult good language learners appeared to use five significant strategies: (a) taking an active approach to the task of language learning, (b) recognizing and exploiting the systematic nature of language, (c) using the language they were learning for communication and interaction, (d) managing their own affective difficulties with language learning, and (e) monitoring their language learning performance.

While these results focus on the input and output of L2, more recent studies have focused on the additional influence of sociocultural factors on language learners; basically, that L2 learners exist within specific historical, social, and cultural contexts which influence how a learner learns an L2 and how successful they are. Learners must have access to various conversations in their communities for learning to take place. As Vygotsky explained, learning is a social process, and while it is possible for some language learners to be successful without large amounts of social interaction in their L2, it is much less likely for a learner to be successful if they do not have the opportunity to speak and access various types of conversation with other speakers.

This can be difficult because not all communities or practices are structured in ways that allow L2 learners to access these opportunities with ease. As Pierce and Toohey saw with the participants in their study, certain social situations are more "inviting" to L2 learners, while others are not. For example, Eva worked at a fast food restaurant called Munchies where her limited English and immigrant status landed her a job cleaning the store which allowed her very little access to the conversations and interactions that would have allowed her to explore her L2 capabilities. However, while she did not have this opportunity at work, she took advantage of monthly employee outings to speak to her co-workers in a different environment, enabling them to see her in a different light than they once had and enhancing her ability to engage them in conversation in the work place.

Through Eva, we see that her success was a combination of structures already in place, but also her own attempts to take advantage of opportunities when they arose. This is because of the effect "social identity" has on language learning. As Pierce and Toohey explain, social identity is not a unidimensional aspect of an individual; it is dynamic and multifaceted. Eva's social identity evolved over the course of her time in the United States and learning English. She began to view herself as a "multicultural citizen with power" rather than an "illegitimate speaker of English".

The issue of power that enabled Eva to take more control in her own L2 interactions is an important issue that can play a large role in a learner's ability to learn an L2. Power dynamics play a large role in social interactions, though we often do not notice it. Unfortunately, those who are listening do not always regard those who are speaking as "worthy to speak". All too often, L2 learners are dismissed, whether verbally or nonverbally, directly or indirectly, because of their L2 status, immigrant status, or other perceived statuses. This can make it difficult for an L2 learner to insert themselves into conversations where they may not be welcome or respected. Therefore, although a learner may be highly "motivated" or "invested" in learning an L2, they may not always have the opportunity to explore this because of power imbalances in their communities or society.