Response to “TESOL at Forty: What are the issues?” by S. Canagarajah.

Viewing the snappy progression of TESOL history from the lens of postmodern metanarratives, innumerable perspectives converge and conflict while marking and shaping the line of its linearity. Keeping this in mind, Canagarajah has endeavored to historicize the complicated odyssey TESOL made in its short span of history. His concern to contemplate on the issues of understanding the current state of profession in the light of TESOL history is noteworthy. Sundry changes and challenges emerged with the introduction of TESOL program as its history marched by dissecting all the traditional attitudes of second language teaching and learning praxis or policies. However, we are still engaged in other dire challenges to face and actualize in postmodern situation, a situation in which all the hierarchies are convincingly ruptured and erased, the native/non-native dichotomy has been divorced. Whether it is the concept of postmethod as expounded by Canagarajah, or the position of prioritizing readers’ authorship while negotiating with textual voices as examined by Barthes, narrating history of TESOL in our critical pedagogy from postcolonial setting remarkably provides new avenues to observe how it is progressing. Making a graceful entrée into TESOL program, I have been meaningfully managing myself now to reexamine and review my old pedagogic tradition in which I was brought up.

In Canagarajah views, TESOL teachers are now compelled to orient themselves to thier learners in more specific ways, taking into account their diverse perspectives, attitudes, views, and their learning contexts. Clearly, learner is invariably compelled to construct his/her identity through constant motivation. I do believe that the sole factor that assists to achieve the course goals is motivation. In constructing the new sense of self through motivation is quintessentially the modern phenomenon. Our TESOL history has evinced the fact that we have miraculously moving from authoritarian structures to egalitarian ones and we are shifting toward process-world rather than a product-world.  Canagarajah’s insightful observation on learner, subject matter, method, and sociopolitical and geographical dimension embodies his current survey of TESOL historical progression. What I believe is that we need to work more valiantly not merely to join our leaning community but to “shuttle between communities” (26). We need to remember that “our quest for objective, absolute, and universal knowledge has been shaken by the questioning of Enlightenment thinking and modernist science” (28). The obvious factor is that we are not discovering or devising any new or novel ideological methods for implementation in academic sector. What we are doing is the observation and constantly reexamination of our assumption to enrich our knowledge with/in the TESOL successful historical progression.

Response to Nelson’s “Heterosexism in ESL: Examining our Attitude” and “Sexual Identities in ESL: Queer Theory and Classroom Inquiry”

When I sometimes open the unit on lesbian, gay and queer criticism by reading a list of frequently anthologized British and American writers: for example, Oscar Wild, Tennessee Williams, Willa Cather, James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Edward Albee, W. H. Auden, William Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, I ask myself if I am aware that these writers are gay, lesbian, transgendered or bisexual. Sometimes that question is met by an initial reticence to respond, a difficulty not encountered in my opening discussion of other theories.

Of course, I know that, unfortunately, the stigma attached to being thought gay or lesbian is still quite strong in ESL classroom today, and I am sure most students may be indisposed to express anything on the subject until they see how the rest of the group respond. As I remember, after signing out a number of books on lesbian and gay theory from the university library booklist, I planned to write for my project work. I wondered if the person who was waiting on me at the circulation desk thought I was nonstraight, and to my embarrassment, I found myself wanting to shout, “Hey, wait a minute; I am not a gay!”

These days, I have acknowledged that the work of gay and lesbian writers forms a major part of the literary canon and is therefore included in most language and literature courses, but many students posit that these writers are overtly straight. Two reasons rule behind this assumption. First, authors’ biographical information mostly lack to divulge their other personal secrets and second, often we are given little biographical information about a writer’s lesbian or gay sexual orientation, let alone information concerning how that orientation affected her or his life and literary production.

I ask, “If personal information about writers’ heterosexual lives is relevant to our appreciation of their work, why is personal information about their nonstraight lives often excluded from the domain of pertinent historical data?” Clearly, in many of our college classrooms today, homosexuality is still considered as uncomfortable topic of discussion. I have seen some language or literature professors simply avoid addressing lesbian and gay issues in undergraduate courses, not specifically devoted to lesbians and gay writers.

I cannot imagine what perspective ESL students develop when a professor simply says that she is a lesbian. Tragically, I lack any such experiences as no self-declared lesbian professor has ever taught me; nor have I countered lesbian or gay students in my class. One incident always draws my attention when I open the chapters on queer theory thsre days. The event was really shocking for me when I saw two young ladies kissing emotionally and erotically standing under the shadow of colossal tree at the Michigan Lake site in Chicago last summer. Because I am from different cultural backdrop, this was culturally and ethically unacceptable and undesirable for me. This unbecoming sight in my case awakened my consciousness to rethink and reconstruct my vision of lesbianism. Though I was unnecessarily shocked at this scene, I thought it to have been the culture of the West. If I had been at least taught by a “self-declared or self-claimed” lesbian teacher, it would definitely have been a different matter.

Now, I realize that, as Cynthia Nelson herself proclaims, student in ESL classroom should need the knowledge of “gayism” or lesbianism to prepare themselves for the debate about sexual identity in education which has been enriched by queer theory. Reading Nelson articles has challenged my previously held assumption once again and inspired me to pursue a line of research I never would have expected.    

Response to “Reexamining English Only in the ESL Classroom”

The most controversial debate that is going on in teaching ESL is whether the use of L1 in L2 learning is necessary or not. My experience in ESL teaching is almost naught. However, teaching English courses to non-native speakers has interesting experiences with me that I have gained through two ways. The first one is by using L1 while teaching English grammar course in a class and second by using English only while teaching the same course in another similar class.  This choice was rather biased and unfair for the college management. English-only-medium in the classroom was the circulation but I was taking the risk at this point which I explicate in what follows. I did not have any principle of my own for this choice either because it was neither to challenge the system of the college nor to be popular among the students who would learn English through L1. Neither was it my intention of doing so, too.

The students’ selection was made on the basis of their performance in previous examinations. So, comparatively higher scorers, who were assumed to be fast learner, were in the first section. And the rest were in the second. No one would expect me to use L1 in first section but everyone in the second wanted me to use L1 from the very beginning of our session. At first, I tried to convince the latter that doing so was to challenge the management. I taught them the way I taught in the first section for a few days. But later something triggered me that it was injustice not to hear the voice of majority, not to understand their desire and passion of learning L2 through L1-- a comfortable way for both of us. It was comfortable because I could make them every lesson clear and because they could ask openly if any problems would arise- no language problem, no communication gap among us at all. Thus, I began accordingly by risking my position. As the days passed, I found this most productive and fruitful because I saw their active participation in class discussion. The only trouble I had was when I had to switch L1 to English-only medium promptly while someone would be inspecting this “English class” overtly or covertly.

This resulted two worlds- the world inside the classroom and the world outside, especially in the case of first section students. I used to find myself at a distance with them because of their disinclination to communicate with me in English as I was always speaking English with them inside and outside the class. I never found anyone from this section to approach me and ask any questions because of their hesitation to follow English-only-medium principle. But the students from second section invariably used to be walking around me to share their thoughts and problems, views and visions as candidly as they could. This I continued throughout the session, sometimes being guilty and sometimes being proud. It was because I did not know whether or not I made right decision to teach L2 through L1. But when I read “Reexamining English Only in the ESL Classroom,” I found myself as a right character who had made abrupt decision even by risking the position.  This article, in a way, has expunged my long ingrained notion and biased erroneous western humanistic vision of teaching English to L2 learners with English Only medium. 

Response to “Going Beyond the Native Speaker in Language Teaching” by Vivian Cook.

“L2 students cannot be turned into native speakers without altering the core meaning of native speakers (187).” For me, an attempt to define “native speakers” seems just to unnecessarily problematize the conventional or historical meaning and thereby to challenge the notoriously biased views so far developed by many native or nonnative speakers. Unreasonably being critical, many have reasoned logically or, better say, illogically why the preference of native speaker still prevails in L2 learning communities. Frivolous though it seems, this and other such views are so contentious that we need to think over the solution before something transpires against it. Many catchy and convincing definitions have been supplied for this most debatable term “native speaker”; nevertheless, not even a single critical thinker feels contentment with its divergent definitions. We have witnessed that no language is irrevocable and no L2 learners can speak like a native speaker. This nature of language-changeability has complicated the definition of the term further. It is true that language accomplished in childhood dies hard. It is also true that a child can learn L2 much faster than an adult does. None can claim to be a native speaker on the ground that s/he learnt it first or was born with it. There is nothing called nativity or non-nativity. For me, this is rather a language politics or an exercise of power politics over the never winning game which is already lost.

It is time to think whether language is a barricade or a beneficial to our language leaning practice. No two speakers can speak with the same tone and tongue. In most cases, the indisputable definition of “native speaker” is that a native speaker is the one who speaks the language learnt first. But this and other such definitions are never satisfactory in the case of bilinguists who speak L2 more fluently and unobtrusively than L1. However, practically speaking, an adult definitely feels more comfortable to use L1 in conversation or even in ESL classroom. In this case, the question is: who should teach L2: L1 speakers or L2 users? My experience is that L1 users cannot teach L2 learners as effectively as the L2 users can. The reason behind this is that L2 users know the effective techniques or strategies through their L2 learning experience and do apply them practically while teaching L2. I remember the time when I used to teach English to L2 learners back in Nepal. I believe my students would have to struggle more to learn L2 if they had been taught by L1 users. This is because L2 users adopt the same language learning strategies in the ESL classroom which they had applied during their own continuous L2 learning process. In my case too, I had developed some new techniques of my own to use in my classroom. I have seen many L1 users competent in speech but horribly bad at formal writing. The same case applies for me. I feel much comfortable to use L1 in communication but feel sorry when I happen to write something formally in L1. For me, use of the L1 is seen not as desirable but as a necessary evil.

Reflection on “Revisiting the Colonial in the Postcolonial: Critical Praxis for Nonnative-English-Speaking Teachers in a TESOL Program”

Janina and Keilko’s article has led me to reexamine my past practices and experiences as learner and teacher of theories on colonialism and postcolonialism. The language of colonialism is the language of constructing cultural forms- “the dichotomies that defines and creates the image of “Other” in the realm of language use.” The interesting point is that such cultural construction of colonialism have become stabilized and consequently reproduced in the discourse of post-colonialism as normal, natural, and universal. The most important part of this article is how this colonial construction of “self” and “other” or “we” and “they” is produced in ESOL.

In this context, I had never thought that I myself was learning the language of “Other” and I was othering myself from my nativeness during my university days in Nepal. But the sense of preference to foreign teacher was always there while I was a university student back in Nepal. I remember the time when I had been taught by one foreign student teacher who was a native speaker of English language. We did not doubt his native tongue nor did we question the way he used to teach us. But the problem was that we could not make a mutual friendly connection between him and us. While he was “looking” at us, we would be “gazing” at him. Now, I realize that this colonial construction of cultural form in terms of “looking” and “gazing” is still implicitly revived while learning English language as a language of colonizers. In other words, the dichotomy of nonnative vs. native, west vs. east, dominant vs. subordinate, nature vs. culture and subjectivity vs. objectivity is still not under-eraser. Therefore, one can see the similar situation in an ESL classroom when a native speaker teacher is preferred to others. This is the reason why I attempt to move to examine my own assumption concerning nativeness and accent, asking in what ways I adopted this disempowering discourse that opposes what should be my concern, intelligibility and expertise in the language.

In the process of learning English language, I had never thought that I was the other of NS. In other words, learning English is to (dis)empower myself, to project my “self” to give in other or to become the slave of Other. But it is also an interesting point that native-speaking versus nonnative-speaking English language teacher can be questioned by challenging the validity of native-speaker fallacy because no scientific validity supports this proposition. The amorphous ghost of non-native and native dichotomy always haunts me when I reflect on constructing identity in colonial and postcolonial discourses. TESOL classroom can serve as a site for change in breaking down the dichotomous discourses of nativeness, promote the emergence of counter discourses, and form a unifying identity for all English teachers and professionals.

In Nepal, English is a mandatory subject in the high school and college curriculum because, according to the Ministry of Education, “English is an international language and all student need to learn it.” After reading the article, part of my reflection revolved around the fact that ELT in Nepal is primarily concerned with reading and writing. During my years of teaching, therefore, my main concern was to teach grammar, vocabulary, and other linguistic aspects to help students become able to express their ideas, feelings, emotions and experiences, and their knowledge in their final examination after reading the texts throughout the year. After I read this article, I started to rethink my past experiences and practices. This process of critical reflection has now led me to involve in questions related to identity and unjustified cultural dichotomy of self and other. I have once again recalled my experiences I struggled with issues of identity, language, and social inequity when I was a college instructor. I realize that my role as English teacher will not only to teach the language but also to situate our teaching in a sociohistorical and geopolitical context. This article has compelled me to start generating research in the area of critical pedagogy and ELT in Nepal in the future.

TEACHING METHODS AND ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGEeaching Methods and English as an International Language

In today's class, I will discuss about:

· · Culture of learning.

· ·How the spread of English has brought with it the spread of communicative language teaching (CLT).

· · Who should be given the control of the curriculum and method and why?

Note: The chapter ends with suggestions as to what principles should inform a pedagogy of an international language.

Think about these questions:

· What is culture of learning (learning culture) in yourcountry? Culture of reading?

· What is difference between Eastern Culture of Learning and Western Culture of Learning?

Lets see the History of Teaching Methodology

Grammar-Translation Method (19^th C)

Direct Method (20^th C)

Audiolingualism (1940sand1950s)

Suggestopedia (1970s)

Communicative LanguageTeaching (present day)

?

TEACHING METHODS AND ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGEeaching Methods and English as an International Language

In today's class, I will discuss about:

· · Culture of learning.

· · How the spread of English has brought with it the spread of communicative language teaching (CLT).

· · Who should be given the control of the curriculum and method and why?

Note: The chapter ends with suggestions as to what principles should inform a pedagogy of an international language.

Think about these questions:

· What is culture of learning (learning culture) in yourcountry? Culture of reading?

· What is the difference between Eastern Culture of Learning and Western Culture of Learning?

Lets see the History of Teaching Methodology

Grammar-Translation Method (19^th C)

Direct Method (20^th C)

Audiolingualism (1940sand1950s)

Suggestopedia (1970s)

Communicative LanguageTeaching (present day)

?