Notes on Minimal Risk

just for my reference.

http://ors.ubc.ca/ore/breb-frequently-asked-questions

Minimal Risk Review

If your study qualifies for Minimal Risk Review, you may submit the application anytime, but we ask that you avoid the deadline dates listed above.

Please refer to the Guidance Notes for criteria on Minimal Risk projects, paying careful attention to the exceptions (if your research is incorrectly categorized it will be redirected to Full Board Review, which lengthens the turnaround time).

http://rise.ubc.ca/helpCenter/GN/BREB_Guidance_Notes.html#Guide2.1

Minimal Risk is defined in the Tri-Council Policy Statement as follows: “if potential subjects can reasonably be expected to regard the probability and magnitude of possible harms implied by participation in the research to be no greater than those encountered by the subject in those aspects of his or her everyday life that relate to the research then the research can be regarded as within the range of minimal risk.”

NOTE: all phases of my study seem to fit this.

The BREB retains the right to decide to put any application submitted for minimal risk review forward for full board review. The applicant will be notified of a change. There is no deadline for applications that meet minimal risk criteria.

Types of studies that may be considered for minimal risk review include (but are not limited to):

· Questionnaires or interviews with competent adults that do not cover topics that could be considered sensitive

George Steiner on Holy Saturday

There is one particular day in Western history about which neither historical record nor myth nor Scripture make report. It is a Saturday. And it has become the longest of days. We know of that Good Friday which Christianity holds to have been that of the Cross. But the non-Christian, the atheist, knows of it as well. This is to say that he knows of the injustice, of the interminable, suffering, of the waste, of the brute enigma of ending, which so largely make up not only the historical dimension of the human condition, but the everyday fabric of our personal lives. We know, ineluctably, of the pain, of the failure of love, of the solitude which are our history and private fate. We know also about Sunday. To the Christian, that day signifies an intimation, both assured and precarious, both evident and beyond comprehension, of resurrection, of a justice and a love that have conquered death. If we are non-Christians or non-believers, we know of that Sunday in precisely analogous terms. We conceive of it as the day of liberation from inhumanity and servitude. We look to resolutions, be they therapeutic or political, be they social or messianic. The lineaments of that Sunday carry the name of hope (there is no word less deconstructible).

But ours is a long day’s journey of the Saturday. Between suffering, aloneness, unutterable waste on the one hand and the dream of liberation, of rebirth on the other. In the face of the torture of a child, of the death of love which is Friday, even the greatest art and poetry are almost helpless. In the Utopia of the Sunday, the aesthetic will, presumably, no longer have logic or necessity. The apprehensions and figurations in the play of metaphysical imagining, in the poem and the music, which tell of pain and of hope, of the flesh which is said to taste of ash and of the spirit which is said to have the savour of fire, are always Sabbatarian. They have risen out of an immensity of waiting which is that of man. Without them, how could we be patient?

Real Presences

The sad realization that my study is actually about grammar

...may be upon me. Probably a sociological look at a reified "correct grammar" rather than a deep look into what grammar is (I hope?), but hey: writing is full of grammar. Grammar is a contentious thing in L2 writing. For many students, it's the only thing.

If I stay at the sentence level, 'grammar' is -- maybe along with vocabulary -- kind of the only game in town. Discourse-level features? Elusive.

But remember the "can able to" example and the argument that grammar is ideological:

"I didn't want to jeopardize my case for pluralizing academic writing by extending it to

the controversial terrain of grammar. But a combination of developments in theoretical discourses, social changes, communicative advances, and pedagogical rethinking (reviewed in this article) tell me that now is the time to take my position to its logical conclusion. The moment is ripe to extend my argument of pluralizing English and academic writing into the “deep structure” of grammar."

...thus saith Canagarajah (2006).

Seidlhofer briefly mentions writing/speaking

"Since the intention is to capture a wide range of variation, a corpus of spoken ELF is the first target, at one remove from the stabilizing and standardizing influence of writing"

Ah but this is exactly what is so confounding and interesting about looking into writing. That present progressive -- does writing every fully stabilize and standardize? Maybe sorta, but maybe not!

Ideas off the top of my head

Bias toward writing - it's official and educated and real

only official language is written down

standard language is written language

then how do you keep it up?

nothing about writing actually makes it standard

the mere idea of writing as a thing is what made us think it was standard

the appropriation of writing as a 'learned' technology by educational institutions

so now whatever the educational establishment says is good writing is good writing

and that has been exported along with english

english and education and 'western values' or whatever have been exported from the center to the periphery

the same emphasis about what grammar is acceptable, what good writing is, etc, are maintained

but when a project to appropriate english writing for local institutional purposes is undertaken

e.g. when writing in English becomes a vehicle for local ("un-english")ways of being, identity, etc

then there is a struggle between local norms -- "this is what is right for us" -- and center/international norms -- "we need to fit in with what is right for everybody"

Social phenomena as "myths"

It's pretty common to hear things in our field referred to as "myths" in the sense of "stuff that common sense says is real/true, but actually isn't." Some concepts that have been called myths are the native speaker, English as an international language, the idea of "a language" itself, and, most notable to me currently, standard language, specifically "Standard Written English."

This might be really naive, but aren't socially constructed phenomena real, rather than myths, because they're socially constructed? Because the social world is a real world that we live in? Even if almost nobody can conclusively state every single rule of Really Truly True Real Standard English, don't the facts of a million teachers with red pens, a thousand "whoms," and a general vague sense held by almost everyone who has gone to school that there is such a thing as a standard language make it at the very least an important thing to be reckoned with?

I don't think most people would disagree, in fact, that these are "important things to be reckoned with." I just don't think it's very helpful to use the word "myth" to describe them.

I remember when, as an undergraduate, I learned in a sociology class that race was socially constructed. I felt like I had just learned an amazing secret that hardly anybody else had access to. "Race isn't even real," I'd say, as if that somehow settled things. It took me a little while longer to realize what real meant.

Was this article actually published twice?

I'm not posting this to accuse anyone of doing something unethical, I'm just genuinely confused about how something like this can happen. As far as I can tell, they are the same article.

From English Today:

Chen, M. & Hu, X.(2006). Towards the acceptability of China English at home and abroad.English Today, 22(4), 44-52

doi:10.1017/S0266078406004081

(Published in October)

From Changing English:

Chen, M. & Hu, X.(2006). Towards the acceptability of China English at home and abroad.Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education 13(2), 231-240.

doi: 10.1080/13586840600833648

(Published in August)

Cha's China Issue

The (online) Hong Kong based literary journal Cha is accepting submissions for their "China Issue," pitches due by April 15. See info below. I'll have an essay about English in China in there! (Assuming I write it...)

Cha: An Asian Literary Journal is now accepting submissions for "The China Issue", an edition of the journal devoted exclusively to work from and about contemporary China. The issue, which will be published in June 2011, will feature poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, scholarly works and visual art exploring the modern Middle Kingdom. We are looking for submissions from a wide range of Chinese and international voices on the social, political and cultural forces which are shaping the country. If you have something interesting, opinionated or fresh to say about China today, we would like to hear from you. Please note that we can only accept submissions in English.

We are pleased to announce that Cha former contributor, distinguished Chinese scholar and poet Yibing Huang will be joining Cha as guest editor for the issue (see his biography below) and read the submissions with co-editors Tammy Ho and Jeff Zroback. Huang has graciously agreed to lend us his extensive knowledge of Chinese literature and keen critical eye to help us select the pieces and shape the issue.

The Reviews section will be devoted exclusively to books related to China. If you have a recent book that you think would be right for review in "The China Issue", we encourage you to contact our Reviews Editor Eddie Tay at eddie@asiancha.com. Books should be sent to Eddie before the end of March 2011.

If you would like to have work considered for "The China Issue", please submit by email to submissions@asiancha.com by 15th April, 2011. Please include "The China Issue" in the subject line of the email or your work will automatically be considered for one of the regular issues. Submissions to the issue should conform to our guidelines.

CELT 2012 Hong Kong

http://celtconference.org/celt_flyer.pdf

Christians in English Language Teaching: Exploring the Volcation of English Language Teaching and Scholarship

OK, suddenly thinking it might be worth it to stick around in China for this. Jan. 27-29 at Chinese University Hong Kong. Plenary speakers: Suresh Canagarajah, Agnes Lam, Zoltan Dornyei.

Comparison vs Description

Should we get away from the 'comparing new Englishes to old-school Englishes' way of looking at varieties of English, or embrace it as a useful tool? Thinking about whether a study that starts with "native speaker" reactions is the best way to go -- it may be preferable not to use categories of 'features' generated by NS reactions....or, it may be useful if the goal is a comparison. Is the goal comparison or description of the cultural/sociolinguistic place of English in (a) society on its own terms? That would be the question. I can see value in doing either one

Theory, or How the Present Produces the Past

New theories create new problems -- or they respond to problems -- by "problematizing" things. That's fine.

Yet what strikes me as wrong with this is the assumption that "traditional" or previous ways of thinking/being/doing/understanding certain issues have not yet been 'problematized.'

There is an assumption that if certain things were not, in the past, understood in the way they are in the present, with a theoretical perspective available only in the present, then these things were previously misunderstood, or at the very least have been 'undertheorized.'

This strikes me as mostly a political, not an intellectual, judgement. And while it is not wrong to make your approach to research fit into how things are moving in your field at the moment, I think there is a kind of contemporary arrogance to arguing that old theory X is problematic because it did not take into account new theory Y.

New theories don't simple replace old theories. They produce old theories. They tell us what old theories were and why they were wrong, doing so in the light of theories that exist in the present. In a scholarly climate where 'knowledge creation' is the watchword of research, new theories will always have the upper hand.

(Unless you want to get into some arguments about space and time, which I don't.)

English in the World and "Ideology"

Looking more into "language ideologies" and came across this helpful footnote from Seargeant 2008:

Approaching this issue from the tradition that has developed under the rubric of ‘language ideologies’ (Woolard, 1998; Blommaert, 2006), the assertion that the subject of English in the world is one that is predominantly ideology-led reads as something of a truism. Within this tradition, all language use happens within a framework of entrenched beliefs (ideologies) about language, and it is these patterns of belief that create the pragmatic conventions and orientations which imbue linguistic behaviour with particular meanings (Silverstein, 1979). In the case of ‘world’ English, however, the ideologies that structure research and discussion are often explicitly foregrounded, leading to a situation where debate in this area regularly takes a self-consciously political turn. There is, then, a distinction – though one more of degree than of kind – between the explicitly ideological (the political) and the ideology of entrenched beliefs (the cultural); and it is the former which inflects the majority of work on English within a globalized context.

OK....let's hear it for the latter, though! That sounds better to me.

Kingsley Bolton

As I look through the relevant literature on World Englishes and related subjects (e.g., English as a Lingua France, English as a global language, etc), one author whose work and perspective I really appreciate is Dr Kingsley Bolton (not to be confused with Kingsley Shacklebolt), who is currently at City University of Hong Kong. He has a knack for looking at the field historically and explaining the various streams and trends of scholarship that make it up -- especially worthwhile are two chapters he wrote for the Handbook of World Englishes: "World Englishes Today" and "Varieties of World Englishes" clarify a lot of questions I've had.

Bolton recently left a co-editorship at English Today to take a similar position at World Englishes. To learn a little more about him, including an interesting story about his desire to study Hong Kong English and the way some people though (and think, surely) it's not worth doing, read "A Note about Kingsley Bolton" and "A Note from Kingsley Bolton" in the new issue of WE. (You'll probably need to have access to a university library to access them.)

Halliday 1978 - Language study and other fields

This makes a lot of sense!

Is there anything missing from this? Are there other fields that need to be considered now, 30 years later? (e.g. cultural studies)

I feel like I'm somewhere in the neighborhood of "language as behavior."

Wanted: A Braj Kachru Bibliography

As the "father" of World Englishes, Braj Kachru has authored a staggering assortment of books and articles on the subject since the 1960s. Unfortunately, to my knowledge no one has ever assembled a complete bibliography of these works.

I'm pretty keen on the idea of comprehensive bibliographies on any scholar, and I appreciate those scholars who make their CVs available online so I don't have to run all over the place seeking their publications. Google Scholar is suitable in many cases, but Kachru is so prolific that I give up easily.

I asked Suzanne Hilgendorf, who studied with Kachru, if she could suggest anything. She suggested the following as the most essential resources (in reverse chronological order, I believe) for assembling a bibliography:

• The Handbook of World Englishes
  Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, Cecil Nelson
• World Englishes in Asian Contexts
  Yamuna Kachru, Cecil L. Nelson
• World Englishes: critical concepts in linguistics, Volume 3
  Kingsley Bolton, Braj B. Kachru
• The Other Tongue
  Braj B. Kachru
• The Alchemy of English
  Braj B. Kachru

Mollin's Euro-English

Just ILL'ed a copy of Sandra Mollin's book Euro-English: Assessing Variety Status. A quick skim reveals that it includes 3 studies - she determines that these 3 things need to be sorted out in order to assess whether a lg merits "variety" status:

1. FUNCTION - synthesis of previous statistical research on uses of English throughout EU states.

2. FORM - Mollin created her own corpus and mapped it to the ICE-GB. Don't know how features were singled out for analysis/explanation -- need to look into that.

3. ATTITUDE - Large survey of European professors, including a section on evaluating samples of Euro-English (oddly, not taken from the corpus, but based on "stereotypical" features from previous research - this seems a problem, but I think I understand why she did it), as well as questions about attitudes toward English in general.

To what extent could/should one try to replicate these in other contexts? Could they be single countries, or would it be better to look at analogous associations -- "the Sinosphere," ASEAN, Africa, etc?

How do you get at the question "What is a language?"

Other than a dialect with an army and a navy, I mean.

"What is English?"

Well, um, it's a language, a system with its own rules of morphology, phonology, orthography, syntax, etc., which can all be described by very specific references to...well, to itself, I suppose. That is interesting. One begins to understand the distinction between the "traditional" study of language-as-system and the "less traditional" study of language-in-use. Where does the system come from? Who makes it? While we all seem to have the innate capacity to understand and do language, we don't really map out the system ourselves. Nobody has the blueprints (despite what L'Academie might wish), yet we are constantly building. Bakhtin tells us that no one short of God has made an original utterance (and that I assume he means metaphorically).

The thing is, then, that language is made and re-made and grows and changes constantly. Maybe the changes take a while -- half a century to get the current connotations of, say, gay in English or tongzhi in Mandarin --but language is what it is because we keep on making it what it is. (Why? I have no idea what causes us to keep changing it. Maybe it has something to do with boredom.)

What I'm getting at is, I used to think that the most important thing for getting at a definition of a language -- or specifically, a variety of English -- was a hardcore analysis of the stuff of language itself -- linguistic or rhetorical or discourse analysis. What I think I think now (not a typo), though, is that those kinds of analysis are very good for some things, but they're not necessarily ideal for answering the question "what is this language?" (Well, there's also corpus analysis, which I used to think was overly sciencey and academic, but which I am more and more interested in since it is based on real samples of language-in-use.)

People -- everyday schlubs like you and me -- are the ones who make language, and the ones who decide what it is. So one of the best ways to figure out what a language is -- and this is going to sound so simple and naive as to be almost absurd -- is to ask people what it is.

Is this English?

Is this good writing?
Is this standard English?

Is this a well-written sentence?

Is this grammar OK?
What does this mean? Would you write it that way if it was your essay?

Why?

Why not?

Notes about advancing to candidacy in LLED

Comps

Option C: The Doctoral supervisory committee, in consultation with the student, determines the topics for three papers before any writing begins. The student may propose the three topics and/or draft three possible questions or outlines to present to the committee. The student may also provide initial reading lists (prior to Sept. 2010 all students were required to complete 3 comprehensive papers, as described here).

The papers typically cover the following three general areas:

1. The student’s area of specialization within Language and Literacy Education

does this mean TESL, or more specifically, L2 writing? How specific am I supposed to get here? ESL/EFL gap, NESTs and L2 writing, English writing in China -- some specific question about those?

2. One additional area or group of areas of special interest

Presumably world Englishes? Relationship of WEs to "China English?" Just English in China, broadly?

3. Appropriate research methodology

Review of survey/interview studies in WEs? In EFL writing? In Chinese ELT? In TESL, broadly?

Or....Dr Shi has suggested the papers should be:

1. Theoretical framework (Is WEs a theoretical framework? Should I delve into Bourdieu & Bakhtin as I did in an earlier paper that I totally fudged?)

2. Research Methods (I've heard it said this can be hard because it tends to be vague and not tied to anything real...Obvs need to do this at some point, but how shall I approach it?)

3. Empirical review of previous studies (To be folded into diss. Question is: Which studies? English in China? Probably, right? But if I'm influenced by other "is this a WEs variety" studies -- e.g. Europe, Singapore, India, Africa -- shouldn't those be just as necessary?)

Actually Dr Shi's way makes more sense to me...and it's basically half the dissertation. Yeah.

Proposal

(from the new procedures; comps above are based on old procedures. I have a choice. Not sure which one to go for with proposal -- new way is more work but more feedback.)

After the coursework and comprehensive examinations, the research design for the dissertation is brought together in the form of a proposal. The proposal for the dissertation includes the research problem, theoretical framework, methodology, a thorough review of the research literature and the context for the work within relevant literature, the significance and limitations of the study. Including a time line and summary of the scope of each chapter of the thesis is also recommended. The proposal should be about 40 pages in length.

The research supervisor, in consultation with the student, will determine when the proposal is ready for examination. The student will then submit the proposal to the supervisory committee and circulate it to members of the department. The proposal presentation date should be scheduled at least three weeks after the proposal has been circulated. The defence will comprise two parts: a public presentation with questions from the supervisory committee and others (maximum of one hour) and a closed session with the student and the supervisory committee. Although the dissertation proposal will be the focus of questioning, the student should also be prepared to answer questions on areas relevant to the study.

I like the sound of that a lot, actually.

Is there such a thing as Christian sociolinguistics?

Berry, W., (2005). Standing by Words : Essays. City: Shoemaker & Hoard.

Coates, R., (1998). Christianity in Bakhtin. Cambridge: Cambridge Unversity Press.

Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Kristjansson, C. (2007). “The Word in the World: So to Speak (A Freirean Legacy)” in Smith, David I. & Terry A. Osborn (eds.),Spirituality, Social Justice and Language Learning. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Steiner, G., (1991). Real Presences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Percy, W., (2000). Lost in the Cosmos. New York: Picador USA.

Poythress, V., (2009). In the Beginning Was the Word. Wheaton: Crossway Books.


Also the pope's Verbum Domini seems important maybe.

Methods

Carmen Isabel Luján García, in her review of Sandra Mollin's 2006 book Euro-English: Assessing Variety Status (in which Mollin rejects the existence of such a variety):

"For this research, a questionnaire survey was used as the unique method of studying attitudes towards English across Europe. It was administered via e-mail, and the sampling was the population of academics across Europe, as university lecturers’ e-mails are easily accessible. The total number was 4230 addresses from 21 countries. The questionnaire was composed of three sections; the first being elicited to analyse the error correction by means of a set of sentences that had to be checked by the respondents offering a correct alternative in case of mistakes; the second section asked for personal data required as sociolinguistic variables: age, country of origin, mother tongue and branch of science (Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, or the Arts); the third targeted the respondents’ general beliefs and attitudes towards English by questioning their agreement or disagreement on a scale of five items that ranged from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Two rounds were necessary. After both were completed, 746 completed questionnaires were obtained."

Thoughts:

1. Part 1 is a lot like what I have been proposing for my study. Good! That means it's legit.

2. 4,230 people were contacted? Yeesh! Maybe I should set my own sights a little higher. (Like sampling professors at Project 211 schools, maybe?)

3. I need to read this book.

4. García suggests the study would be stronger if follow-up interviews were used. I'm proposing to do so!

More CE brainstorming

I had a weird conversation with somebody recently: I said something like "yeah, it's interesting how English is becoming a big part of Chinese society, it's pretty fascinating since it doesn't have much of a history there compared to some other countries" [yes, I am aware that there have been English/Chinese interactions for hundreds of years, but in terms of English really taking hold in the PRC, it's relatively recent] and she made a somewhat confusing comment like "that's a very typical attitude of an English-speaking person." I didn't really get what she was getting at -- maybe she was saying that only an L1 English speaker would think English in a non-English-speaking country was fascinating/interesting/worth studying?

Anyway, I think I need to be leaning even harder than I thought on the "I'm not Chinese" angle. And I want to actually embrace the connection between native English speakers and Chinese English. I exchanged brief thoughts on this with Oliver Radtke last year -- he's interested in looking at both Chinese and non-Chinese attitudes toward Chinglish, which in his case I think refers more to the ludicrous signage one often reads about in popular articles on the topic. Most previous studies in "my field" (i.e. ESL/L2 writing/World Englishes) focus on Chinese English speakers' attitudes about CE/Chinglish. Hu included some NESs in her studies but again, those were generic 'attitude' studies.

How about just "English"?

Thought:

The best way to get at "China English" is not to call it that. Just call it English and see what happens.

IAWE 2010 = Success

Full recap coming soon -- notes:

- presented with my classmate Ai Mizuta on Chinese and English ed in Vancouver - well-received!

- Had a chance to chat with Fan Fang, Xing Fang, Xu Zhichang, Peter Sayer, & Kingsley Bolton (!) on China English stuff -- very stimulating, will definitely recap this!

- Bought Xu's new book "Chinese English," and Lo Bianco's "China and English" (to be shipped -- only $20, free shipping! Thanks Multilingual Matters!)

- A lot of fodder for thinking about how to approach my dissertation proposal

- Found out you can buy TEM transcripts from the Chinese MoE! Amazing! Can you get the writing test data? How freaking great would that be? Can get CET also, I wonder?

The Dilemma of the ESL Ghetto in Vancouver

"When entry into an English-speaking students’ peer group was not deemed feasible because they were taking ESL courses and English-speaking students were taking mainstream courses, they turned to students of the same ethnic origin for friendship. By the same token, once the high school Chinese immigrant students in this study decided to seek company of fellow compatriots and to continue being part of the Chinese-speaking community, learning English could become peripheral to them. They could minimize their investment in English and invest more in Chinese to keep the membership of a compatriot peer group."

- "Identity and Language Functions: High School Chinese Immigrant Studentsʼ Code-Switching Dilemmas in ESL Classes" by Liang Xiaoping

Textbooks for TESOL & Culture Class - ideas?

Re-opening comments for the first time in a couple of years for this question...

I'm teaching an "Intro to Teaching ESL" course later this summer as part of a sequence of classes. The first class will cover a lot of the "practical" aspects -- teaching the 4 skills, methods, materials, strategies, etc. -- and my portion will mostly cover "cultural" aspects of TESOL.

Question: what textbook should I use? The hope is something broad, not too theoretical, and cheap.

Ideas so far (with Canadian price):

Language and Culture by Claire Kramsch ($23) - short, many short collected readings, but not TESOL-or-teaching-focused per se

Teaching Culture: Perspectives in Practice by Patrick Moran ($40) - tons of exercises, examples, etc, but written by a foreign lg teacher (French) and focused on teaching culture rather than "cultural issues" in teaching

Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning by Eli Hinkel ($22) - I like this one, and I think even though it was written in 1999 it gets at a lot of issues (and has stuff by a lot of different authors)...leaning toward it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

From the new issue of World Englishes

Always a fascinating journal, but these articles particularly caught my eye. Hope to read soon:

Chinese perceptions of Inner Circle varieties of English

from World Englishes by BETSY E. EVANS

Research from populations around the world on attitudes to varieties of English is essential in order to have a better understanding of how the complexities of globalization play a role in the form of English as a world language. To that end, university students in China were asked to name countries around the world where they believe English is spoken and indicate what kind of impression they have of those varieties without the presentation of voice stimuli. This type of data elicitation enables the participants themselves to provide the researcher with evaluative categories and avoids problems associated with using voice stimuli. The results indicate that the effect of the cultural hegemony of US English as a variety is complex, and that, contrary to assumptions, US English is unlikely to be a model for a 'standard' variety of world English in the traditional sense.

Linguistically privileged and cursed? American university students and the global hegemony of English

from World Englishes by CHRISTOF DEMONT-HEINRICH

This paper analyzes written discourse generated in response to an open-ended questionnaire administered to 136 students at two different universities in the southwestern United States and to 15 non-American students at a large Danish university. The questionnaire aimed to inspire reflection about the impact of the global rise of English on American mother-tongue speakers of English as well as on those who do not have English as a mother tongue, especially with respect to the question of mono vs. multilingual practice. Most American and non-American respondents represented the learning of a foreign language as something American mother-tongue speakers should do but as something which is not necessary. There was widespread, though not unanimous, agreement that English is necessary for non-mother-tongue speakers. Responses are also grouped, discussed, and analyzed in terms of the instrumental, multicultural, or mix of multicultural and instrumental logic used. The author is especially concerned with the intersections between the global hegemony of English and the learning of foreign languages. The study and analysis conducted here offer insight into these intersections. Given that so much is at stake in terms of the relationship between the global expansion of English and foreign language learning, the author concludes that further research into this relationship is needed.

Ying Ge Li Shi

Is this racist? I got distracted by YouTube videos of people of Asian heritage showing "how to speak with a Chinese accent" (aka making fun?) a while back and Sarah told me to stop because she thought it was racist.

You can see that the person who made this video is using one of those books which purports to teach "English" by giving Chinese characters that are vague equivalents of English sounds. See if you can tell what she's saying. And whether you think it's mean.

Books for me to check out

keep this in mind for teaching this summer -

Writing across the curriculum in secondary classrooms : teaching from a diverse perspective

• Author: Harriet Arzu Scarborough
• Subjects: English language -- Composition and exercises -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- United States ; Interdisciplinary approach in education -- United States ; Multicultural education -- United States
• Description: Introduction / Promoting Literacy in Science Class / Math and Science in My English Class? Why Not? / Writing in a Law-Related English Class / Using Writing for Political Awareness / La Voz Liberada: Writing to Learn in a Sheltered English Class / Writing to Learn as a Way of Making Sense of the World / Real Live Audiences for Real Live Communication: Writing to Learn and the Possibilities of Technology / Writing Teacher Learns / "Forever on the Morning Wind": Expanding the Canon of American Literature / Place Poetry: A Form of Self-Expression / Perspectives on the Three-Voices Narrative / Bridging the Gaps and Spaces among Learners in a Writing-to-Learn Classroom / Making the Transition from High School to University Writing Across the Curriculum / Rearranging Desks /
  
• Publisher: Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Merrill
  
• Creation Date: c2001
  
• Language: English
  
• Format: vi, 218 p. ; 24 cm..
  
• ISBN: 0130224898
  
• Type: Book

ALSO THIS

Language and learning across the curriculum

• Author: Marion Crowhurst
• Subjects: English language -- Study and teaching (Elementary) ; English language -- Study andteaching (Secondary)
• Publisher: Scarborough, Ont. : Prentice-Hall Canada
  
• Creation Date: 1994 [i.e., 1993
  
• Language: English
  
• Format: xi, 311 p..
  
• ISBN: 0205161340
  
• Type: Book

"long time" and "no see" separately

This could be interesting, too.

for example, from the OED:

No-see-um

1842 N. Amer. Rev. Jan. 100 In some parts of New England and Canada, is a kind of midge..which is sufficiently formidable to the feeling, though so minute to the eye that the Indians in Maine give it the name of No-see-'em.

---

"long time" in "standard English" has been around forever (like, "it took a long time for that egg to cook," or whatever), but look at these uses of "long time" in Jamaican English:

1961 F. G. CASSIDYJamaica Talk vi. 107 Long time means long ago (‘Him gone long time’). 1971 Jamaican Weekly Gleaner 3 Nov. 5/1 Tams are also in (well, we did have that long time).

Google as Corpus - "I took GRE" vs. "I took the GRE"

As a native speaker of English, for some reason I have this intuition that "I took the GRE" is preferable to "I took GRE."

However, "I took GRE" yields over 66,000 hits on Google, whereas "I took the GRE" only shows about 44,000.

So either I'm wrong (possible) or more non-native speakers take the GRE than native speakers (also quite possible).

It could also have something to do with "I took GRE classes" or sentences like that.

But still:

"I took GRE yesterday" - 587

"I took the GRE yesterday" - 241

However:

"I took SAT yesterday" - 2

"I took the SAT yesterday" 157

So...maybe more NNSs are taking the GRE and writing about it on the internet, while more NSs are taking the SAT and writing about it on the internet?

Long Time No See: Etymology

I'm now apparently obsessed with the etymology of "long time no see." I have a hunch that it is based on making fun of non-native English rather than a direct translation from Chinese, but I don't know how one might "prove" this. I'll let you know what I come up with. The earliest instance I can find it in written form is in Glenanaar: A Story of Irish Life from around 1895-1905 or so. That would certainly allow for contact with Chinese Pidgin English to make its way to England. But how trustworthy is early documentation of CPE? Then again, am I being unfair when I think it can't be "accurate" because it was so blatantly racist?

"Long Time No See" = "Chinglish" or not?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "long time no see" is an expression which originates from (American) Native speakers making fun of Non-native speakers of unspecified L1 background. The first recorded usage the OED has is a reference to Native American (not Chinese) speech.

While its similarity to 好久不見 (hao jiu bu jian)is notable, I haven't seen any proof that this is actually a "loan translation," and I'm not sure you could ever "prove" such a thing.

c. Colloq. phr. (orig. U.S.) long time no see, a joc. imitation of broken English, used as a greeting after prolonged separation.

1900 W. F. DRANNAN 31 Yrs. on Plains (1901) xxxvii. 515 When we rode up to him [sc. an American Indian] he said: ‘Good mornin. Long time no see you.’1939 R. CHANDLER in Sat. Even. Post 14 Oct. 72/4 Hi, Tony. Long time no see. 1940 [see HIYA int.]. 1959 D. BEATY Cone of Silence viii. 105 ‘Hello, Clive.’ ‘Long time no see.’ 1959 C. MACINNES Absolute Beginners 68 Hail, squire... Long time no see. 1971 D. E. WESTLAKE I gave at the Office (1972) 164 ‘Hello, Arnold,’ I said... ‘Long time no see.’

Pidgin English Sing-Song by Charles Leland

Free on Google Books -- "China English" (supposedly) from 1887!

The way he writes about it is super racist, but it's amazing how similar it is to the way we talk about "Chinglish" today!

Language in, as, for, and of development

"English has already played and will continue to play a significant role in the Lao PDR’s present socio-economic development (language in development).

[In East Timor] English is perceived by many as playing an important role in the country’s development. And there is plenty of aid money to support ELT both as an end in itself (language as development) and as a tool for other domains of development (language for development).

In order to become a legitimate speaker in project management, far more is needed than language competence and the right to speak at meetings. In part, this raises the question of the language of development, or the discourses that construct the ways in which development happens."

quotes from Language in development constrained: Three contexts by Ros Appleby, Kath Copley, Sisamone Sithirajvongsa, Alastair Pennycook

Upcoming papers

Just turning a corner from 2 weeks of being sick and 5 days of being really, really sick. On track to do 3 papers in the next 3 weeks. Yeeks!

Paper #1 is going to be something about foreign teachers in China, but I also want to tie it to the idea of development. I guess I could see it going one of two ways:

A) Role of FTs in the discourse of "English for development/modernization"

B) FTs in China: new models (look at 3 things: Nottingham, Shantou, & Amity -- one prob is that Snow has already - ably - covered Amity quite well.) DUE APR 12

Not sure how both could be combined, but if it's possible, I'd like to do it that way. I could situate the whole thing within the idea of "the purpose of English" and then talk about which of the 4 models ("regular" plus the 3 others) comes closest to facilitating this purpose. Could be more like "the purpose of FTs in China: 4 models" - maybe that'd work.

Paper #2 has to do with a rationale for studying written forms of world Englishes -- esp. China English, of course. Why study writing (since a lot of stuff has focused on speaking); where to look for this writing (media, online, education, academic publishing, etc?); what actually makes it "authentic" CE (problematic, since the definition is loose/not agreed-upon), things like that. There's a lot out there for this but my ideas are still kind of amorphous. DUE APR 20

Paper #3 is on research methods but I'm unsure what exactly it'll be about. Need to figure it out pretty quick, though. Something about L2 writing would be good. DUE APR 16

Review

My review of Christian and Critical English Language Educators in Dialogue is in press with the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. I'm really happy to be publishing this!

Is the Answer in the Question?

Imagine the following two items on a survey.

A) Read this a text written by a Chinese person and published in China. Please identify any vocabulary, grammar, phrasing, sentence, word choice, etc. which strikes you as nonstandard, unusual, or unique in any way.

or

B) Read this text. Please identify any vocabulary, grammar, phrasing, sentence, word choice, etc. which strikes you as nonstandard, unusual, or unique in any way.

I'm beginning to think that you could do a study comparing the results of A and B. For my purposes, I may want to go with the wording for B...

I'm still thinking that Chinglish is in the eye of the beholder. A sign on the building I work in reads "WELCOME ANYTIME PARKING." In China, that would be Chinglish. In Vancouver, it's just a sign.

Employment

I got a job teaching a real live undergraduate course at UBC this summer - "Language Across the Curriculum in Multilingual Classrooms: Secondary." May 17-June 25. Yeah!

Remaking of Face

Ouyang, Huhua (2000) Remaking of face and community of practices: An ethnographic study of what ELT reform means to local and expatrate teachers in today's China. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong.

Read it here.

Hugely eye-opening to anyone who is or is considering becoming a foreign teacher in China. I read chapter 3, which is about the students' and administrators' complaints about foreign teachers and how they go about voicing them. Another major part (which I didn't read) is an explanation that Chinese universities are based on the danwei ("work unit") system, which is a kind of Maoist/communist community, which doesn't necessarily hold as much currency in the job market in today's China.

It's stuff I didn't really know at all -- definitely worth a read as an explication of why the "foreign expert" system is deeply flawed, and (in my view) why other emerging models of NEST/NNEST integration (I promise to stop citing Ningbo and Shantou as soon as I learn about others) may be better.

Apparently was published as a book in 2004, but maybe in Chinese - I can't find any references.

Thinking about my possible role in the future as a teacher-trainer / someone with etic/emic knowledge of ELT in China. Don't want it to define my career, but I think it could be a rewarding part of my future work.

Chinglish debate is about what, exactly?

I feel like a debate on terminology (we should call it X vs Y) or even preferred terms (X is bad English, Y is good English) obscures the fact that a) English in China does have its own characteristics, b) People who think it's bad also think anything other than inner circle Englishes are bad, and c) It needs to be described if there is any chance of changing b. Then again, that whole Ebonics debate didn't turn out so well.

Books on China/English - to be contd

Bolton - Chinese Englishes (2003)

Adamson - China's English: A History of English in Chinese Education (2004)

Liu - English Language Teaching in China: New Approaches, Perspectives, and Standards (2008)

Lo Bianco - China and English: Globalization and the Dilemmas of Identity (2009)

You - Writing in the Devil's Tongue: A History of English Composition in China (2010)

Feng - English Language in Education and Societies Across Greater China (in press)