Learners Need 'Natives' to Guide not Dictate

[fluffyhamster]

http://www.eltnews.com/features/special/2003_10_2.shtml

For many of us there's probably nothing particularly new at the above link, but I thought the section entitled 'Discourse' deserves comment:

Discourse
Patterns of discourse (written and spoken) are culturally determined. Unless she wishes to study in an anglophone environment, don't expect the Hindi student to follow quasi-Aristotelian conventions of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, and don't dismiss her as illogical if she doesn't. It may be her convention to start and finish an essay with quotations from the classics. Recognise diversity and allow its expression through English.

Regardless of whether this Hindi student 'wishes to study in an anglophone environment' (and therefore master EAP), the fact is, she is writing for an English teacher. Surely the language used should reflect the conventions of that language (especially regarding the intended recipient)? If not, perhaps the teacher should forget the whole exercise and set tasks "in" Hindustani (and learn about its conventions) instead (which may not involve writing "essays" as English speakers know or would recognize them at all).

Basically, this seems a bit of a strange and confused argument of Hill's to me, unless the goal of the writing task is to engage in a sort of quasi-"translation" exercise; personally, if the conventions were going to be this much of a problem, I myself would set less demanding tasks with a clearer purpose, means and end.

[lolwhites]

I suppose it comes daown to haw far you can divorce a target language from the culture(s) and convention(s) of the country/ies where that language is spoken.

If I were learning Hindi I could reasonably expect to be told how to write in a way that followed local conventions.

[woodcutter]

I shall emerge from the crypt for just one moment, for this is really Asian studies. That discipline is also subject to the unfortunate ravages of senseless academics, mostly on the pattern of Said and his "Orientalism".
There is nothing going on in an all European language class which has anything at all to do with Aristotle, and there are no situations in that context in which the fact that someone is Indian will have a bearing on whether what they are saying makes any sense to western ears, in terms of being able to comprehend it. Value judgements are different, but that needn't cause a problem.

Methodology must be employed though, and the university driven education industry is very poorly equipped to deal with cultural difference. While we must be PC and claim to be flexible, in fact that cultural difference usually rears its head in terms of conservative values in the classroom. The East Asians may expect heavily teacher centered classes, the Middle Eastern students may disrespect women. Things we are supposed to struggle against. So the whole situation *does not compute*, it all gets covered in a kind of cloying intellectual goo, dangerous to touch.

[fluffyhamster]

Well, I don't know if the cultural differences are so deep that they would necessarily interfere with comprehensibility per se, but I think that given the complexity of the task (writing an essay) there will always be some problems with the English used at both the sentential and discoursal level, and to say that problems at the discoursal level are matters of culture rather than due to a lack of language (English) and an awareness of an English reader's rightful and at the very least linguistic expectations would seem to doom the student to doing some rather silly and nebulous "communicative" activity trapped in a linguistico-cultural limboland. A decent teacher would give the students ample practice in the necessary and required forms, and it is unavoidable that for essays the language reflects and is itself a potential artifact of the essay-writing culture, in this case the English essay-writing culture (presuming there are indeed strong differences in essay-writing languages-and-cultures).

Perhaps if Hill had used a different word or phrase to 'essay' I'd've objected less, but actually, simply saying e.g. "write something on or about" (should the student think, 'Using the conventions of my own speech, such as it is?* Or formal written English?' etc etc) could be even worse, an even greater potential waste of time, a process clouded by wooly thinking, resulting in a liberal tippy-toeing around the issue of actually teaching some decent and honest-to-goodness English.

Of course, if in some future Utopia everyone is speaking or writing (or even "just doing") their own somewhat differing English(es) yet somehow getting along swimmingly, then the methodological mindset will need to change substantially (and I would accept that some changes are already in the wind, needed, and taking place right now, imperceptibly), but I wonder still if there are that many students who feel that it is as helpful as it could be to them and their learning to be more or less told "anything goes, so don't expect to be taught any one thing".

*Actually I am more than happy if students write as they more or less speak (or even "write" in their language-culture), but as I said above, it then helps if the task is not too demanding (I presume that people everywhere overlap to a somewhat greater extent when they are "just" e.g. writing letters and now very possibly emails too to their friends around the world).

[woodcutter]

Oh dear, always ready to rant, I forgot we were discussing essays. On that issue, of course, different cultures approach it in a different way. Chinese students often love pat phrases, for example. And of course we should tell them how it is usually done in English. OK, those of us teaching English in India would have to be wary, for then "Indian English" would have to be taken into account. In general though, its another area where common sense would guide us better than the academic thought police, for if we are to allow students to follow the style of construction normal in their own tongue then we will no doubt be all at sea, not knowing what to advise, what is "wrong" and what is an ethnic quirk.

All the same though, it is not connected with logic. No matter what lump of earth you (or Aristotle) tread upon, logic works just the same, and a scientific approach will allow you to construct evil western machines from exotic Asian materials.

[Pink Piggy]

I'm am strongly in favour of adapting my teaching to student need. In this case, if the student does not need to learn formal essay structure, and simply wants to practice for whatever other reason, then focussing on the unnecessary is a waste of time. You can't teach everything.
Remember, also, that a large number of people in India communicate in English, but not at a cultural level. Don't make the mistake of equating English language with Western culture. I don't think it is PC to say that English goes beyond Canada, the USA, England, Australia, and New Zealand.
That said, in the case of essay writing, learning the basic structure of the essay (Intro-body-conclusion), and the most common options for paragraph structuring (even the basic notion of one paragraph = one topic) has to be seen in terms of reading comprehension too.
If reading comprehension is a goal, then learning organization is necessary. I don't know much about Hindi speaking students, but I have a lot of experience with teaching TOEFL to Chinese students. In my experience, it is a revelation to many of them that pivotal ideas will appear early in an essay, and that things mentioned near the end may simply be added information. Chinese students tend to build their essays (in Chinese and English) towards a climax and end with the most significant information. Information mentioned early on may be irrelevent or tangential. So when these students read they expend their focus in this way too. You have to teach them to look very carefully for the main idea of each paragraph, and not assume it will be at the end. In fact, it is often the first or second line of the paragraph that reveals its focus.
So my basic points are that its totally appropriate in many cases to let student write "essays" in the own way, depending on their needs and cultural millieu. However, it is important to remember that learning the cultural assumptions that underlie the organization of an essay will be beneficial not only to the students' writing (should they need to write for Western English readers), but also to their reading comprehension.

-Sharon in Winnipeg

[woodcutter]

I can read a bit of Chinese, and "getting to the point at the end" is something I've heard people talk of, but never notice myself. How about you other Chinese-ers? The essay faults that pink p mentions are common to all students, in my view. Nor are real live paragraphs as regimented as teaching text books make out!

Anyway, if there were a difference, it would be a matter of style, not logic. A Chinese essay about, say, chemistry wouldn't lack critical information at the beginning, so as to be hard for a western mind to understand, because when it comes to logic, human minds all work in the same way. Thats why Asians are able to employ methods developed in the west and build better machines than westerners.

Teaching a common essay style is not a PC faux pas, one would hope.

[Tara B]

Funny how Aristotelian discourse wheedled its way into English in the first place isn't it. . .

[woodcutter]

Nobody had a logical conversation before Aristo popped up I suppose.
We are always so ready to attribute everything to "great men".

[Stephen Jones]

hat discipline is also subject to the unfortunate ravages of senseless academics, mostly on the pattern of Said and his "Orientalism".

I have both "Orientalism" and "Culture and Imperialism" sitting in front of me. Perhaps you would be so kind as to give us the page references for what you view as Said's inappropriate espousal of cultural relativism, and what other authors you feel to be following in his footsteps.

[fluffyhamster]

This could get interesting!

[Stephen Jones]

I've just read the article by Hill. It's almost a parody of political correctness. Luckily it seems to have had no resonance whatsoever apart from the ppor sods he will be training for the BC in Istanbul.

Amongst the total rubbish it is full of is that "global English is a pidgin" and we should be aware if this when we teach it. If it's a pidgin for God's sake why do we need to teach it in the first place.

To have it published in ELT Japan is not surprising. It is the Japanese, or to be more precise a collection of British teachers in Japan with some kind of peculiar hang-up about Empire, who are proposing something called "Asian English", which presumably means that Indains, Chinese, Thais and Malayasians should try and learn a version of English impregnated with Japanese L1 interference.

[woodcutter]

I have neither in front of me. Nor did I manage to read the whole lot, I must confess.

My problem with Mr.Said is not that he points out that the west, in general, views the east through a certain filter that will cause inaccuracy. That is true. But it is also obvious, and it is also unavoidable, true of any cultural gang looking at another cultural gang. East at west, for example.

My problem is that he takes so many pages to say this thing, uses overly pedantic academic language, says it in a way that implies westerners are somehow uniquely blinkered, and gives no sensible guidance (as far as I can remember) as to how history, therefore, ought to be written. Follow him, and you will end up like Dr.Deans at SOAS, claiming we need a new approach to write about every culture/nation we deal with. Since west, east and other groups have no clear boundaries, that's clear nonsense.

Having written a dull tome of lamentable acadamese, Said has been taken up as a suitable high-brow stick with which to pummel anybody who would dare to look at eastern affairs through their own western moral lens. Not entirely his fault though. (Some bloke on the Amazon reviews of the book has a good take on this kind of thing by the way).

[fluffyhamster]

Well, if you don't have any hang-ups at all about Empire (and at your age, too! ), you're a better man than I am.

But of course, you're right that Empire shouldn't be (such) an (explicit) issue (anymore) for today's generation (even for those who have become "footsoldiers", teachers, for the EFL industry); anyone who is serious about teaching English must ultimately get to grips with the intricacies of their native language and use those findings as the basis for their teaching (how could it be otherwise - why should anyone not work on and with what they know best and should always be getting to know even better)...and none of this necessarily precludes a (healthy) interest in regional and international (including learner) diversity and creativity in using the language (by that, I mean a creativity that is striking for its better qualities rather than any puzzling if not worrying symptoms of L1 interference - "mistakes", in a word).

Until such time as the supposed legions of perfectly fluent Japanese and Chinese start speaking a variety of English that is recognizably good and acceptable to other competent users around the globe (or at least stop writing textbooks with such lame dialogues, or examining students on archaic vestiges or obscure points of wholly prescriptive grammar), they will presumably still need native speakers to hold their hand and more or less assure them they are free to twist the language around as much as they like for their own (silly, not that e.g. the AET says this word) purposes, just so long as the other Japanese or Chinese get it and accept it (not saying a natural language is evolving in any way shape or form here).

Are there as many westerners involved in teaching - often an*lly, inaccurately or just plain badly - Chinese or Japanese in the west? Western students of foreign languages seem much more willing to accept the guidance and perhaps even the dominance of native speakers, and western countries don't seem to have such contradictory, often national policies where native speakers are simultaneously feted but also held at arm's length (but then, we don't have quite the competition for university places), but this doesn't stop many westerners totally changing in asian climes, and refusing to accept, or only reluctantly accepting, whatever authority BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY RESPONSIBILITY that is bestowed upon them - a case of "When in Rome...", whilst disregarding that maybe not all roads will lead to Rome (or if they do, they could well be winding and torturous ones rather than the sleek Route 66 superhighway that's also available). Maybe we (westerners ) are simply more the perennial students, despite (or maybe because of!) our lack of a strong "Confucian" teacher-centred and led tradition.

I am not of course suggesting for a moment that westerners should become the new mandarins in the educational systems of asian countries, but the ambivalence (and often just the lack of knowledge, pure and simple) must constrain what is possible and can only add to the contradictory emotions (and sometimes "schizophrenic", blowing hot-cold, ones, in asian countries, learners and even their non-native teachers) that are often on display in TEFL.

Edit: This is obviously in reply to SJ's post - I've only just seen yours, woody. I'll let SJ reply to you (ore both of us) first before I say anything further.

[fluffyhamster]

BTW, I didn't know Said was into hats.

Sorry, couldn't resist!