Week 13!

CANAGARAJAH

It was stated in the article again about how English is the language used mainly in multilingual contexts as a second language and for communication between non-native speakers. I will never forget when this phenomenon happened while I was abroad. I was in a meeting where Japanese, Costa Ricans, Germans, and some Africans were present. I was the only American in the room. I will never forget how it felt to hear my native language being the common language in that room; it is such an odd feeling, almost like outside-of-body vibe. I understand that we do need a business language, though, similar to what the movie clip stated last week.

“In addition to grammatical competence, we have to give equal importance to: language awareness that enables speakers to make instantaneous inferences about the norms and conventions of their multilingual interlocutors; strategic competence to negotiate interpersonal relationships effectively; and pragmatic competence to adopt communicative conventions that are appropriate for the interlocutor, purpose, and situation.” Pragmatic and grammatical competence are always a big tiff, at least in my experiences in American pedagogy. Which one should be emphasized? Which one is more important? I don’t feel as though we can separate these two realms, and yet we do. If we don’t have the grammatical competence, we are unable to get our most simple point across sometimes, especially depending on our audience. And even if our grammar is perfect yet we lack the pragmatic background, we are unable to properly implement day-to-day speech acts that allows to build (or destroy) relationships. The hardest issue is knowing when and how to implement the two realms in a coherent manner.

I found the concept of “communities of imagination” interesting, especially since I have been studying Benedict Anderson and his concept of “imagined communities” quite a bit this semester. Could we possibly discuss this further tomorrow night?

WAGNER AND FIRTH

One thing I have appreciated about the theories we have learned is that they combine both the social and cognitive dimensions of TESOL, and this article really brought that conceptualization of SLA together. In my other TESOL courses, the main focus has been with more cognitive aspects, but according to our discussions and this article, the ultimate goal to have a more theoretically and methodologically balanced enterprise that “endeavors to attend to, explicate, and explore, in more equal measures and, where possible, in integrated ways, both the social and cognitive dimensions of S/FL use and acquisition.”

I enjoyed the section regarding “communication strategies.” The following quote is one that I have personal experience with and see my students also dealing with now: “Feelings of incompetence and difficulty when learning a FL are surely commonplace, and often psychologically salient.” This is especially true when our students are struggling with oral production. No matter what level of the foreign language the LL is at, he/she will always deal with vulnerability and inferiority in that language, but that’s all part of the adventure! I think having learned a foreign language gives me more empathy for my future ELLs and their obstacles they will face, both cognitively and socially.