Language Ecology

Language Ecology

The language is natural to the human being, and its cultural environment so it has a parallel process next to the human develop, it is a natural way growing at the same time with the human being, according to this idea Pennycook (2010) mentions “the notion of language ecology derives from Haugen (1972) and suggests the importance of “ the cultivation and preservation of languages”, in which the language is part of the cultural identity and individual has the opportunity to maintenance the natural language.

                                      

Nevertheless, this opportunity is not given to all member of the society at the same way, because behind the language there are different social and political condition, for instance, in Colombia we do not have respect to our ethnic languages, in education we have a clear purpose to get english as a foreign language according to the national politics in education, and it is the same case with the spanish in the ethnic culture. At the school in the indigene groups the students learn spanish as the official language in Colombia, and their own language and culture has a second place in the educative process, and they start to turn their mind in idea that the most important things are in spanish or in the big cities, this idealization of the urban culture adds to the unnumbered social problems promote the language death.

                                    

From my point of view it is not necessary to think in the english language to identify the power of the language, we just have to turn our eyes in the street in our city to understand that many people from ethnic groups are walking along the avenues finding their identity because the government has not done enough effort to maintenance them safe in their groups.         

Word´s Power

Word´s Power

I have worked in two cities, both cities emphasize in the fact of the good results are a good education, but in my personal opinion there are not always this kind of relation, not necessarily good results meaning good education, the education implies much more than a test. But this much more is given in the teacher´s hands, the teacher has to face and bear a lot of life situation alone in the classroom. In Tunja this year, La Secretaría de Educación Municipal named a support team for each school, since February I have seen this psychologists, social workers and therapists in my school, walking around us but I have no seen a real interventions in our student´s lives, I do not understand what is their real job, I expect that they work with the students directly, but nothing it is happening in this way.

For this, and much more items in relation with the educative policies, we the teachers have to create a lot of strategies, activities, and projects in order to give our students a confortable and workable environment to learn, we need to start to think in the classroom like the perfect research laboratory in the way to consolidate this continuous creations in order to make better Colombian children.

Thus, I going to talk about the languages learning in a classroom, I pretend to portray some important considerations to take in account in our daily job with the learners in order to give them some real and functional knowledge to improve their whole education, not just a piece of the cake but the spoon to eat it completely, by their own rhythm and expectations according with their needs.

If we introduce the language through a real fact, which the students can take and use as part of their own context the language will have a real meaning in their lives. We can balance the human need of communication ideas with the languages as a live being that are working in our society as a constructor of ideas and relationships between human beings. The language is a being able to say its own history, its challenges and said our history as a society. In the classroom we have to show our students the real power of the language, which is able to change minds, ideas, attitudes and feelings. 

The power of the languages is reflecting in some theoretical issues, grammar as meaning:

Linguistic meaning covers a great deal more than repots of events in the real world. It expresses…our attitudes…towards the person we are speaking to, how we feel about the reliability of our message, how we situated ourselves in the events we report, and many other things that make our messages not merely a recital of facts but a complex of facts and comments. (Bolinger 1977)

The language pretend more than express some events in our lives, it is a very complex system that work in our minds, our bodies and our world with a big and strong force to make us intelligent beings.

When we talk about the system we have to take in account Saussure who mentions two faces in the languages, signifier and signified, I am talking about the meaning and referent in a fact action that make a relationship between them. They need mutually; a real thing needs a word that can represent it in the human mind and the human mind needs a factual thing to establish a meaning, this is the first concept that Saussure give us about the language as a meaning and we have to start from this conception to understand the meaning system.

“The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image. The latter in not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses. The sound-images is sensory, and if I happen to call it “material,” it is only in that sense, and by way of opposing it to the other term of the association, the concept, which is generally more abstract.” Saussure (1915)

In our job practices we have to try to give our students the real meaning of the words presenting them in a factual context, for instance if I want that they learn vocabulary about the food, I try to show them the food to give them some of this food to try it, taste it, and eat it in order to make more meaningful learning. It is not enough to show them the words; we have to present the “material” thing to build the abstract concept since a real thing.

We have in the bookshops a lot of learning books, the most of them present the english as a foreign language that is so far from us, and the students can understand a real use of this or how they can use it in a real situation, that books show the language out of our context; for example in the case when we talk about the season the student book mentions four seasons but the students do not know any of this because in Tunja or Colombia we do not have seasons.  It is labor of the teachers give the students a close language that the students can touch it.

In consequence, the language system has to be presented in the classroom with its different components submerged in a factual context:

“The context in which grammar is embedded need to be generally useful and appropriate to the needs of the learner group. In this way grammar becomes generative and students can transfer it to relevant situation. Contexts can be created though visuals, through the teacher miming or demonstrating in the classroom, through a dialogue, a text, a song or a video, or through a situation set up by the teacher.” Hedge (2008)

One of the most difficult items in the English or language class is the grammar, so that we have to present it showing the use at the first time, in other case our student cannot understand and start to feel confused about the language, for this reason they lose the motivation to learn a foreign language. Nowadays we have a lot of internet resources that help us to make some tactile environments to our classes in order to show our students meaningful learning and a need to communicate with others people in their context using a foreign language. 

From this conception it arises another perspective of the learning grammar in the languages classroom, the discourse as a part of the communicative competence in order to construct the grammatical concepts, as I mentioned before the context is the main component in a meaningful class so that the grammar rules emerge from the real use:

“This is the perspective taken in A communicative Grammar of English (Leech and Svartvik 1975) which devotes one section to “Meanings in connected discourse” and looks at how meaning can be put together in spoken or written discourse”. Hedge (2008)

I think so this is the focus at the first moment of learning process, if we start in this way our students can understand the grammar as a part of the language not as a totality in the language, we can present this rules how a part of the system to help us to make a discourse in a correct way, with some useful uses in real situation.

These items are just some of the much that we have to considerate along our career, but I consider that it is a good point to start to become teachers…

   BIBLIOGRAPHY

·       HEDGE, T. (2008). Teaching and learning in the language Classroom. Oxford University Press. Oxford.

·       SAUSSURE, F. (1915). Course in General Linguistics. McGraw Hill book Company.

Grammar ???

Reasoning and Hypothesizing

“- Adults create hypotheses about the rules these patterns might demonstrate, and gradually revise their hypotheses according to new information. They seem to use a set of strategies for analyzing the language and reasoning about it. These have been described by Oxford (1990) as “reasoning deductively”, “analyzing contrastively”, “translating” and “transferring”- Hedge (2008).

This is the main difference between a child learner and an adult learner, the kind of the process that they use to acquire grammar; the child takes a frequently form to use in a real communicative fact, while the adults tend to analyze and create hypothetic rules to start to use the language, for this reason we as teachers have to focus our classes in different way according with the learners, we have to give to our students the clues to learn according with their ages, for adults, children, or teenagers, each group uses different process to learn and manipulate the information.

It is more commonly that the adults resort to grammar pre-knowledge in natural language to understand new information about the foreign language, in this case they can use the grammatical structures in L1 to translate or transfer it into the L2 and here we find other problems: the L1 grammar, our students cannot identify the grammatical structures in L1 because they do not have enough understanding about their own language, so that they have difficulties to understand it in L2. The form to present the grammar it is very important in order to give our students appropriate information according with their needs. 

Vocabulary

Some words are easier to learn than others.

I remember what happened to me when I was living in Sweden where I learned Swedish and little Russian vocabulary, I lived with my father and my stepmother who was Russian. I had to go to the school to learn Swedish and in my house we spoke spanish and my stepmother spoke Russian, I was living in Sweden so that I studied Swedish at school, in that time I could remember easier some words that I used in Sweden and Russian for instance Chair in Swedish is “stol” in Russian I “ стул (styl)”, I had to use this words several times with the same meaning, I could identify the similar sounds in two languages at the same time in my house, in the school, at the cafeteria wherever I was, today I remember clearly this words and their meaning, I think so that the use in a real context is very important to memorized the vocabulary, but I  think I learned this words in a natural way, in that moment I need to understand and communicate to other people.

Denotative and connotative meaning

If a word has reference to an object, or event in the physical world, this can be described as its referential or denotative meaning.- If this term relates to the attitudes and emotions it is connotative meaning (Hedge 2008) This is one of the most difficult task  that the students have to do, when they need to select a correct word in a specific situation whit a special intention. It is really interesting to notice this particular phenomena, the most of the time they have a high degree in difficult to find an appropriate word, even when there are studying their natural language.

Connotative meaning is term relates to the attitudes and emotions of a language user in choosing a word in the influence of these on listener or reader´s interpretation of the word (Hedge 2008) In the expression “ It is raining cats and dogs”  I have a good example of this use,   when I listened it at the first time, I get in my mind an image of cats at dogs falling down from the sky, it was really funny, I have never imagined something like this but I understood the meaning easily.

I know it is possible to speak a foreign language but it is not easy to understand the meanings like a native speaker, a lot of language is given by the context surrounding. We can discover a meaning an associate it to a real thing in the world but the “semantic weight” won be exactly the same that you feel when this real thing is in your own context. This is a big problem that we, as foreign language teachers have in the teaching-learning process, the most of the time we have to invent an artificial context to offer to our students a very close real meaning; this is a huge challenge that we have.

Teacher and Neocolonialism

A reflection from the “Primer Seminario Internacional en Metodología de la Investigación en Lenguaje y Cultura UPTC”

Since I started this master program, the seminar is the second time that I listen to someone saying that we, english teachers, are “transmitters of neocolonialism”, it was in the Dr. Julian Edge Conference. This idea, in particular, catches my attention because I consider a different thing, I could be sure that is not true, we are teachers and we try to show to our students the world in a different way, in other words, with others sounds, in my personal case I have never been in England or USA, for this reason I do not fell like a “transmitter of neocolonialism”, I am just a teacher and I try to do my job in a good way.  I am trying to understand every people, many points of view, different cultures, and of course learn about them.

I know the system, the politicizes in a second language learning/teaching are focused by a lot of English or North American programs, instead of we as teachers have the language power, we can teaching in a critical way. Nowadays we can find a lot of material from different countries and we can contrast different conceptions, different cultures different English languages and built our concept of a global knowledge, we have our culture and from this we can make our identity in a foreign language.  

Teachers always learn.

When I finished my degree I had never imagined that amazing job that I had to do.

Along my professional life teaching, around 8 years, I have taught to children, teenagers and adults, so that I believe we are learning exactly like them or maybe more than them.

“It is important to recognize that ideally, teachers are also learners and they “negotiate meanings” with their students”[1]

The classroom is the perfect place to interchange life experiences, points of view or reflections; it is the place where we understand the real world, and every this through the language. Although, this experience is very different than I learned at the university in my degree, I could not imagine the amazing job that I will have to do.

In the school we can develop a lot of abilities of students and when we are teaching a foreign language it is important take in account the purpose of the school. I consider, nowadays the school is not only the place where someone goes to study, today as before, the school is an active part of the society, the place where the children make friends, where they understand the rules of the society/school, where they built and express their selves ideas, the school is the place where the children start to fell as an active member of the society. I notice we have a huge responsability in our country, in our culture, with our future, with our children.

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[1]  NOVAK, Joseph D.  A THEORY OF EDUCATION: MEANINGFUL LEARNING UNDERLIES THE CONSTRUCTIVE INTEGRATION OF THINKING, FEELING, AND ACTING LEADING TO EMPOWERMENT FOR COMMITMENT AND RESPONSIBILITY. Meaningful Learning Review – V1(2), pp. 1-14 , 2011

Being...

 Being a linguist o a philologist

Along my career I always had listened about the differences between linguistics and philology, and the conclusion that I had was “philology studies the language in itself focus in its rules and a good way to use, this takes in account the literature and the writing text along the time, instead of linguistics which studies the language its use in a specific context, it is more flexible with the rules and uses because the most important is the realization language.

Nowadays, I think so the linguistics and philologists are closer that I had ever imagined. We are interested in the language development; we are excited by the same thing “the words”, in a big conception. I am a classical philologist and, of course, I understand the classical languages, Latin and Greek, for this reason I can get the meaning of words through the etymology, it is a passion for me, I learn vocabulary in my native language and in foreign language.

I love to study the language in itself, its structure, its uses, its meaning, its history and I am every days interested in learning something new about the languages. Maybe it is the reason that I have to follow the Russian as a foreign language in my degree at the University of Colombia, where for my fortune, l could choice this language, it was not easy to understand because it has declinations, this is an analytic language, however I had an advantage, I was studying Latin and Greek and they have declinations too. I establish some meaning with the classical language and my nature language and then I can transfer them to learn Russian, It was an amazing adventure through languages.  

Despite my passion for this languages, after I finished my degree the language that help me to develop my professional way the English, which I studied as a free class at night in the university.   Since that  I go into the “angloworld”, but I have never left my essence as a classical philologist, for that reason I decided to continue with my English study and took a translation English-Spanish-English course, really I was amazing I can being a philologist whit a modern language “English”.  

In my own way with language I have been a detective, a historian and, why not, a poetry. During the time I was dedicated to classical languages, I had to research a lot for a “simple text”(like a little story in a determinate time) because its time, because its uses, because its speakers-writers or because its hearers-readers, and of course because its history, that it is impossible to separate them. In consequence I learned these languages; nowadays this is my first motivation to teach languages.

But I have too an otherwise like a linguist, I have worked closer to linguistics than philology, I have learned to understand the language in its realization, as a life thing which can change, transform and move along the time.  I remember the time when I was living in Sweden with my father’s family, my little sister, Erika, at that time she was 3 years old, and she started to speak, in her two nature languages, Spanish and Russian, her mom is Russian and my dad is Colombian, she used to said – Deisy ven! Titta to tam – this sentence is a mixture of three languages, Russian, Spanish and Swedish, I noticed this phenomena as a particular thing because just the people in the home could to understand her. She was using three different languages in the same sentence without a distinction to communicate a diary activity, the first step to be a “semilingual”. Now I start to be reflexive about the language along my own life, not a professional but a common person in this world.