Post #10

            Chapter two in the textbook by McKay describes the contexts in which English is being learned. It also goes into detail about Kachru’s model of English use contexts. A common reason why some people start to take formal English classes is because of the “belief that English provides access to global communication and knowledge.” But there are also other people who are required to take English, so they do not have a choice. The two ELI students I talked to in class who were from Japan said that they never had a choice as to whether or not they wanted to learn English. I asked them how they felt about that and they didn’t really know how to answer, probably because they had never thought about it since they never had a choice. In my opinion, this chapter explains Kachru’s concentric circles of English speakers much better than the other articles. It is a lot easier to understand. Countries in the inner circle are where English is the primary language of the country, like the United States or Australia. The outer circle is where English is the second language in multilingual countries, such as Singapore. Lastly, is the expanding circle, where English is widely studied as a foreign language, like in China and Germany. I still think that it is kind of difficult to see the distinction between the outer circle and the expanding circle. In many expanding circle countries, students have no motivation to learn English. There are even acronyms to describe this idea: TENAR (Teaching English for No Apparent Reason) and TENOP (Teaching English for NO Obvious Purpose). I can understand how students can lack the motivation to want to learn English, but by the sound of some of the acronyms they define, maybe even the teachers who are teaching English don’t understand why the students are learning it and don’t give students the answer as to the purpose. I don’t understand how students could have absolutely no motivation to learn English, because it’s so widely spoken. The chapter goes on to discuss how the “lines separating these circles have become more permeable” because of the growing migration and the increased use of English. With these circles it is also difficult to factor in English bilinguals who function as natives. A little later in the chapter is says that in South Korea and Japan, the importance of English is highlighted, talking about how it is part of the global community, but the English textbooks there show Korean customs and cultural values as “being more desirable than American traditions.” This surprised me because it’s almost like they’re afraid that the students who are learning English will begin to believe that the American way is better.   

            Chapter three talks about multilingual societies and diglossia. Diglossia is when “speakers have two or more languages in their repertoires” but don’t always use them all in the same situation. The languages have different roles that they play in society and are used in different domains such as family, religion, and education. Some researchers say that in situations involving more than one language it’s hard to “draw distinct lines around particular situations and domains and say that a particular language variety is only used there.” In the interview that I did for the cultural exploration paper, the woman that I interviewed grew up bilingual, speaking both Farsi and English all her life. While she and her family still lived in Iran, she said that she and her sister would always speak Farsi with her mom and English with her dad. But after they came to the United States, they began trying to only speak Farsi inside the house since they only really ever spoke English outside of the house. Dania said that now she mostly speaks English with her parents because that’s the language they’re use to speaking most often. Dania will sometimes speak Farsi with her friends too. So she doesn’t have specific situations in which she speaks one language and other situations where she speaks the other language.