Pronunciation is always my favorite topic about the English teaching. I will have a further investigation about the pronunciation teaching and learning in my final paper. So, I was so excited when I come across this article. And in the passage the author really talk about some issues that may have serious implications for ELT pedagogy. After illustrating the current background of the overall view of the pronunciation role in ELT field and his own view of the teaching English pronunciation as international language rather than foreign language, the author begins to demonstrate his research model and the analysis of it. And then the author gives us his proposal for ELT pronunciation teaching: a syllabus of NNS focusing pronunciation teaching.
These days we talk a lot about taking English as an international language. In the beginning of the passage, the author introduces the changing circumstances and changing pronunciation goals. It is the fact that English is now spoken by a considerable greater number of NNSs than NSs. In Mckay’s book we know that the English users in outer and expanding circles take more percentage among the whole international English circumstance. It is obvious that recent study has begun to shift from NSs based to NNSs based research. The scholars believed that “language teaching would benefit by paying attention to the L2 user rather than concentration primarily on the native speaker.” The author also shows us a clear distinguish between taking English as EIL and EFL. In this case, it will be helpful to clarify his position as regard the appropriateness of regional accents in ELT.
When I begin to learn English, I remember my teacher put a lot emphasis on the pronunciation, and we try really hard to imitate the native-like pronunciation. I think, it is ok to learn standard pronunciation at the initial position since the learners have no input before. However, you will find that we have a very serious problem to correct the wrong or fallacy pronunciation if the speakers have already own their individual pronunciation system. And to my surprise, sometimes, the imperfect pronunciation won’t be a problem for communication. This will probably happen when they talk to native speakers. Happily, I found that author also has similar idea appear in the passage and the research data also prove the situation. This remained me of the teachers’ certification in China. These years, there state a new policy for Chinese teachers who want to gain the certificate or those have already got the certificate. The entire teachers have to pass the exam of psychology, pedagogy and standard mandarin. This can be really funny in the case for those experienced teachers or professors. It really doesn’t matter if they are math or chemistry teachers even thought they are lack of standard pronunciation of mandarin. And for those who have already in their forties or fifties. How can you improve or change their accent easily? But it is still important for those teachers who will teach mandarin especially in primary and middle schools. The requirement for standard mandarin becomes severe these years due to the low level of mandarin for those Cantonese teachers working in the south part of China.
I appreciate the last part of the passage. The proposal shows me a more concrete plan to improve the level of pronunciation with the direction of these theories and ideology.
2009年10月16日星期五
Week-7 CULTURE IN TEACHING ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
In McKay’s book chapter 4, we have a review of the international language that talked about in chapter 1 and also explore the important role of culture in language teaching. It seems that language learning and teaching have a tight relationship with culture; no matter it is the target language culture or the source language culture. In this chapter, the author gains a conclusion about the primary rationales of culture in language teaching: 1) that culture is embedded in the language itself, particularly in the semantics of language; and 2) that cultural content is motivating in language learning. (P100) Also, the author highlighted the three principles that should inform how cultural content is handed in an EIL classroom. First, the materials should be used in such a way that students are encouraged to reflect on their own culture in relation to others. Second, the diversity that exists within all cultures should be emphasized and finally cultural content should be critically examined so that students consider what assumptions are present I the text and in what other ways the topic could be discussed. (P100) And this is what impressed me most the culture including in the material in EIL teaching. The question of which material is a proper one to choice among the source culture, the target culture, or an international culture has come to my mind.
Talking about the material containing different culture, my own experience makes me feel confused. I remember when I was in middle, high school, the topic given by the English teacher either foreign or local teacher were mainly about the western culture. We have special events to celebrate Christmas and Halloween. We talked about the softball and baseball even though almost no one play them or watch them before. We are familiar with, we thought, Jake-o’-lantern, trick- or-treating, costumes, bonfires, mistletoe, and we got along well with Santa Claus. However, these are only the vocabularies memorizing in our mind. We only use it when we have to find a topic to begin our dialogue with foreigners. What’s more? When we go deeper about the topic, they begin to ask about the questions of Chinese festival, like spring festival, dragon boat festival, mid-autumn festival, etc. Then, we keep silent… Funny! Right? But it is true that most of us were involved in such situation. Of course, we keep silent didn’t mean we know nothing or litter about it, or we lack experience about all of these festival. I guarantee that all of us will dash down our opinion about these festivals if we use Chinese. During the learning process, I found it will be much harder to describe the events or objects from outer and expanding circle. Sometimes, direct translation doesn’t help much. So here comes the problem, what we are learning for in our daily life? And if we begin to think about the role of culture, what kind of materials we are using in the past? What if we begin to talk about the Chinese festivals in the class and expand the vocabularies of all words concerning about Chinese Culture? We can’t deny the advantages about gaining information of western culture, it really helps a lot. However, I think we are losing something, which have close relationship with our life, our country, and our culture.
But such situation really changes a little bit, when I teach in the middle school last year. I found the students were capable to introduce the Chinese traditional festival more easily to their foreign teachers whenever they want. And they begin to search for various cultures from all over the world, not only stick in the western culture. International culture flourished in the materials. You begin to see some faces appearing in the text book have black hair not always blond. From the feedback of the students, they like such diverse culture than only western culture. In this situation, learning English becomes more practical and make the students feel more confident. They are no longer afraid of speaking to the people who are not from inner countries. They have more options to choose the way of communication and how to handle the problems they meet in their life. Still, I concern about the percentage of the culture occurring in the learning materials among the source, target and international culture. How to balance them and benefit the teaching?
Talking about the material containing different culture, my own experience makes me feel confused. I remember when I was in middle, high school, the topic given by the English teacher either foreign or local teacher were mainly about the western culture. We have special events to celebrate Christmas and Halloween. We talked about the softball and baseball even though almost no one play them or watch them before. We are familiar with, we thought, Jake-o’-lantern, trick- or-treating, costumes, bonfires, mistletoe, and we got along well with Santa Claus. However, these are only the vocabularies memorizing in our mind. We only use it when we have to find a topic to begin our dialogue with foreigners. What’s more? When we go deeper about the topic, they begin to ask about the questions of Chinese festival, like spring festival, dragon boat festival, mid-autumn festival, etc. Then, we keep silent… Funny! Right? But it is true that most of us were involved in such situation. Of course, we keep silent didn’t mean we know nothing or litter about it, or we lack experience about all of these festival. I guarantee that all of us will dash down our opinion about these festivals if we use Chinese. During the learning process, I found it will be much harder to describe the events or objects from outer and expanding circle. Sometimes, direct translation doesn’t help much. So here comes the problem, what we are learning for in our daily life? And if we begin to think about the role of culture, what kind of materials we are using in the past? What if we begin to talk about the Chinese festivals in the class and expand the vocabularies of all words concerning about Chinese Culture? We can’t deny the advantages about gaining information of western culture, it really helps a lot. However, I think we are losing something, which have close relationship with our life, our country, and our culture.
But such situation really changes a little bit, when I teach in the middle school last year. I found the students were capable to introduce the Chinese traditional festival more easily to their foreign teachers whenever they want. And they begin to search for various cultures from all over the world, not only stick in the western culture. International culture flourished in the materials. You begin to see some faces appearing in the text book have black hair not always blond. From the feedback of the students, they like such diverse culture than only western culture. In this situation, learning English becomes more practical and make the students feel more confident. They are no longer afraid of speaking to the people who are not from inner countries. They have more options to choose the way of communication and how to handle the problems they meet in their life. Still, I concern about the percentage of the culture occurring in the learning materials among the source, target and international culture. How to balance them and benefit the teaching?
2009年10月4日星期日
Week-5 Comments on “Borrowing others’ words: Text, Ownership, Memory, and Plagiarism”
The word “plagiarism” is the most serious word my teacher told me before I came here. What my teacher’s notion is that I should be very careful about “borrow” others words, sentences or ideas when I do the written work in the USA. Since my teacher finished his PH.D abroad, he knew about the directors or the professors are particular about “borrowing words” in USA. While he told me about this, I was doing my thesis which was really hard for me and for most of the Chinese college students. When the teachers were talking about the thesis, I think they were missing the most important part about distinguishing the writing of your own by citing others ideas or words and avoiding plagiarism. We do know don’t copy from others and create by ourselves. But how to cite or borrow properly has been totally ignored. This is a very important part of construct a passage, I think, especially for undergraduate students who are novices of writing academic papers. What’s more? For most of the undergraduate students they don’t own much about the academic theories or research results on their own, so how can they fulfill the whole passage just by the descriptions of the topic? Just like what Franklin said “why should I give my Readers bad lines of m own when good ones of other People’s are so plenty?” (P208).
When we do thesis, it is necessary to find articles or ideas to support our views. But for Chinese students they have two big problems, I think. The first one is, for most of the students in China, learning English is a kind of memorizing words and recited articles. This happens in many L2 learning environment and cause an impact on weakening the ability of creation as L2 learner. This starts from the initial learning period and continues until they are involved in the problem of creating their own work. You can imagine the difficulties and struggle from the students. Actually I understand we need some imitation or copy from others at the very beginning of learning. But the problem goes worse when the students keep on imitate and borrow from others at the time they need to be done by themselves and product their individual ideas or theories. It seems like that some of them are losing the kind of ability or in other word, the creativity and curiosity has been killed with such learning environments. It really sad to talk about it, since to some extent; I am one of them and need the improvement of finding our own way. But it is getting better, more and more fundamental schools are beginning to change their methodology and concept to avoid such problem. And we can get the information from the passage the”such views, with Chinese learners cast as passive, imitative memorizers, to be enlightened by the advent of the creative West, echo down to the present”. (P220) Since the individual views emerged in the recent years, it is easy to see alternative learning practices and relationships to text as little more than backward, outmoded learning strategies. (P220)
And then here comes out the second problem about standardizing the citing system and clarifying boundary between the “legally borrowing” and “illegally Plagiarism”. “A number of quite challenging issues were raised by several students, showing that many of them, while sometimes unsure about the rules of textual borrowing, were nevertheless aware of issues to do with texts and leaning.”(P22) If the clear rules have been positioned, students can, to some extent, avoid involving in the plagiarism situation.
When we do thesis, it is necessary to find articles or ideas to support our views. But for Chinese students they have two big problems, I think. The first one is, for most of the students in China, learning English is a kind of memorizing words and recited articles. This happens in many L2 learning environment and cause an impact on weakening the ability of creation as L2 learner. This starts from the initial learning period and continues until they are involved in the problem of creating their own work. You can imagine the difficulties and struggle from the students. Actually I understand we need some imitation or copy from others at the very beginning of learning. But the problem goes worse when the students keep on imitate and borrow from others at the time they need to be done by themselves and product their individual ideas or theories. It seems like that some of them are losing the kind of ability or in other word, the creativity and curiosity has been killed with such learning environments. It really sad to talk about it, since to some extent; I am one of them and need the improvement of finding our own way. But it is getting better, more and more fundamental schools are beginning to change their methodology and concept to avoid such problem. And we can get the information from the passage the”such views, with Chinese learners cast as passive, imitative memorizers, to be enlightened by the advent of the creative West, echo down to the present”. (P220) Since the individual views emerged in the recent years, it is easy to see alternative learning practices and relationships to text as little more than backward, outmoded learning strategies. (P220)
And then here comes out the second problem about standardizing the citing system and clarifying boundary between the “legally borrowing” and “illegally Plagiarism”. “A number of quite challenging issues were raised by several students, showing that many of them, while sometimes unsure about the rules of textual borrowing, were nevertheless aware of issues to do with texts and leaning.”(P22) If the clear rules have been positioned, students can, to some extent, avoid involving in the plagiarism situation.
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