Global Language

1. Global Language Lecture 15

2. Toward a global language – How long will the road be?

3. Will English be the candidate? English indeed possesses many characteristics that are favored by L2 learners. As the great 19th century American writer Ralph W. Emerson observed, English “is the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.” Of all the world’s languages, it is arguably the richest in vocabulary, and relatively simple in grammatical structures; scattered across every continent, about one-tenth of the world’s population uses English as a mother tongue,.

4. The Indian scholar Braj Kachru describes English as existing in three concentric circles: the inner circle of the predominantly English-speaking countries, the outer circle of the former colonies where English is an official language, and the expanding circle where, although English is neither an official nor a former colonial language, it is increasingly part of many people’s daily lives.

5. However, as Widdowson says, “Control of language is, to a considerable degree, control of power.” To give up one’s first language means to give up one’s own power. Besides, even the sense of pride and identity will leave everyone clinging to their own mother tongue, too.

6. Teaching English as a Foreign Language Four Stages

7. Stage one: the grammar-translation method • The traditional academic style of teaching which places heavy emphasis on grammatical rules explained in the students’ own language and uses translation as the main form of exercises and testing. Consequently, it trains minds in logical thought, develops elegant expression, but meanwhile decontextualizes vocabulary owing to rote learning. It was welcomed in old style schools where learning a foreign language was regarded as a step toward cultural refinement and higher status, rather than its actual use. There is no emphasis on the development of fluent speech.

8. Stage two: the direct method • In contrast, this method encourages fast and effective learning with more tolerance for errors in performance. Its emergence about one hundred years ago was a response to the challenge of new types of students – soldiers from two world wars, immigrants, business people, and tourists, whose sole purpose was to use the language immediately after they had learned it. During the learning program the students’ own languages were banished and everything should be done through the language under instruction. With more and more audio-visual equipment available, this method has evolved into an audio-lingual style that is concerned with the real-life activities the students are going to face.

9. Stage three: the natural approach • Influenced by Krashen’s input hypothesis, this style was popular in the 1970s and 1980s. As a typical example of theory-guided practice, teachers then believed that an adult L2 learner could repeat the children’s route to L1 proficiency, i.e. learning would take place without explanation or grading, and without correction of errors, but simply by exposure to “meaningful input”. This means that attention to meaning would somehow trigger the natural cognitive development of the L2 system – students would work out grammar rules from listening and reading without explicit instruction. After Swain put forward her output hypothesis in 1985, this theoretically seductive method has been fatally challenged and has gradually lost its sacred aura and momentum.

10. Stage four: the communicative approach • As old as the natural approach, it has greater vitality. Its proposition has shifted the goal of foreign language teaching from the mastery of grammar rules to the ability to do things with the language appropriately, fluently, and effectively. Students are encouraged to apply the language first, and then learn the forms which would fulfill their needs in communication. • Recent development: the learner-centered method and task-based instruction.

11. Introduction to Applied Linguistics

12. 1. Macro- and micro applied linguisticsMacro-Applied LinguisticsThe study of language and linguistics in relation to practical problems. Linguistic theories, methods, and findings can be applied to a wide domain varying from natural language processing and machine translation, stylistics, lexicography to language planning and clinical analysis of disorders of spoken, written, or signed language.

13. Micro-Applied Linguistics The study of second and foreign language learning and teaching. In recent years, the subject of foreign language teaching and learning has in fact developed to become the largest domain of enquiry within applied linguistics. The study of second and foreign language learning and teaching can be understood as the micro view of applied linguistics. We shall adopt this view in our course

14. Critical applied linguistics

15. Language Imperialism • The dominance of English is asserted and maintained by the establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities between English and other languages. • ——Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism

16. Classroom discussion

17. How do your think of the current situation of TEFL in China?

18. A survey on English learners in China

19. Do you agree with the following viewpoints? • English is best taught monolingually. • The ideal teacher of English is a native speaker. • The earlier English is taught, the better the results. • The more English is taught, the better the results. • If other languages are used much, standards of English will drop.

20. Do you agree – ? • L2 acquisition resembles the process of pidginization. -- Schumann

21. Definitions A “pidgin” is a speech-system that has been formed to provide a means of communication between people who have no common language. A “pidgin” is an auxiliary language, one that has no native speakers.

22. A pidgin is rule-govern, but it usually gets rid of the difficult or unusual parts of a language, for example, the omission of verbs and the dropping of present-tense inflections. You out the game. He fast in everything he do

23. On the other hand, it also has useful refinements that a Standard language lacks. e.g. the use of be to signify a stable condition in a sentence like: Some of them be big. He working. (He is busy right now) He be working. (He has a steady job)

24. pidginization: (皮钦语化) The development of a grammatically reduced form of a target language in second language acquisition. This is usually a temporary stage in language learning characterized by, for example, a limited system of auxiliary verbs, simplified question and negative forms, and reduced rules for tense, number and other grammatical categories.

25. Possible future of English? • English as a standardized global language will be drowned in the sea of pidginization?

26. Possible future of English? • When English as a universal second language merges with the local cultural setting, new varieties will spring up and gradually detract from each other?

27. Possible future of English? • A new standard international English will be emerging somewhere, with its own rules and regularities different from those of any of the “native Englishes”.

28. Further discussion What kind of global language do we really need? What should we do for the co-existence of this universal L2 and our own L1? How will a global language be properly established?

29. Further reading A recommendation

30. V.Fromkin, et al An Introduction to Language (the 7th edition) Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc. 2002 北京大学出版社，2004

31. Further reading 桂诗春： 新编心理语言学 上海外语教育出版社 2000

32. 桂诗春 应用语言学 （修订版） 北京大学出版社即将出版