Language Teaching and LPP: Homework

Language Teaching and LPP

Larry Javier Ambion

For this paper, I interviewed a 26 year-old high school English teacher from Quezon City. Pam Santos teaches English to third and fourth year students. She grew up speaking both English and Filipino at home and is not fluent in the various dialects of the Philippines. She has been teaching at Immaculate Conception Parish School for three years now and is already well-acquainted with how the school implements its language policies.

Pursuant to the Constitution, the school employs bilingualism in instructing its students. Though the administrators use English when addressing the students during public assembly, in setting out rules, and in writing letters to parents, it is not strict in following monolingualism.  It does not employ English-Only policy and does not castigate students who prefer to speak in the vernacular, except perhaps, during subjects when English is the prescribed medium of instruction. According to Miss Santos, the teachers themselves speak in Filipino when they find themselves grasping for words or feel that a Filipino word would be better. This is prevalent in those teaching Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and the like. As an English teacher, Miss Santos feels that she has to be stricter and strives to use English only while inside the classroom. However, she admits there are times that she uses Filipino when English words are not enough to convey a thought. She admits to doing code-switching, but never within a sentence. She also allows her students to speak in Filipino when she sees them struggling to express themselves. As a teacher, she does not see any danger in this practice. She feels that she has to be more practical and place more focus on the students’ aim to convey their thoughts. From this angle, it is obvious that she does not subscribe to one of invisible ideologies given by Tollefson (2006) that a single dominant language is a common-sense solution to communication problems.

For purist English teachers, the techniques employed by Miss Santos may be considered reprehensible since by virtue of school policies, that she should strictly use the English language when talking to her students inside the class room. The same goes for her colleagues who are teaching subjects other than Filipino. Some see code-switching as bastardizing the language; for Miss Santos and her colleagues, however, it is a way to better teach the students and to make sure that each party understands what the other is saying. Similar to what Tupas (2010) writes in his paper, “Which Norms In Everyday Practice and Why?,” teaching Standard English through code-switching is a cultural strategy along with teaching local content. Miss Santos mentioned that she and her colleagues sometimes relate what they are teaching to local experiences so that the concept does not seem too abstract for the students.

Tupas also wrote how one teacher describes her duty as “telling the students what is wrong in terms of grammar” yet when talking to a student from a country where English is not the mother tongue, they “do not use grammatical structures all the time”. In the same token, Miss Santos does not want to be too particular with grammar when she sees that her student is already struggling to express herself or to comprehend what she is saying. Miss Santos also made it clear that when talking amongst themselves, she and her co-workers use Filipino and when students are within earshot, they speak in English. Miss Santos does not see anything wrong in allowing her students speak in the vernacular from time to time. She believes that she has to be lenient and more forgiving since English is not the first language of the students. This appears to be a long-standing practice in the school where she teaches. According to her, she has used this method in the three years that she has been teaching and finds it an acceptable practice to meet her students halfway. Just like Wee Siang in Tupas’ (2010) article, Miss Santos see that she is “bound to teach” yet she remains “more tolerant towards localized content”. This shows that she views language not only in the academic sense but also with how it functions socially.

Reference

Tollefson, J.W. (2006). Critical theory in language policy. In An introduction to language policy:

theory and method (pp. 42 – 59). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Tupas, T. R. F. (2010). Which norms in everyday practice - and why? In A. Kirkpatrick (Ed.). The

Routledge Handbook of World Englishes (pp. 567 – 579). New York and London: Routledge.

Language Teaching and LPP

A Reflection

Larry Javier Ambion

The “planning” part is considered the most boring activity in a teacher’s life. It is only rivalled by grading papers as one of the most detested tasks of an educator. One can only imagine how it is even more difficult to do in a grander scale.

Language planning, often associated with government planning, is an action undertaken to influence the function or acquisition of a language within a speech community. Since it targets a large number of people, it follows a certain pattern and is subject to many political discussions. One passage that struck me while reading Ricento and Hornberger (1996) is “the abstract underlying institutional discourses are never neutral. They are always structured by ideologies.” As an educator, I would like to believe that what I am doing is pure and free from any influence. That is being naïve, I guess. This has also gotten me thinking whether adapting a federal government will be beneficial to the Filipinos education-wise. On the one hand, it is a relief to know that one can go different provinces and more or less adapt the same lessons, on the other hand, it could be a better teaching and learning experience if one instructs from “the values and norms” of certain groups. It is undeniable that currently, the models for educational systems are private schools in Metro Manila. Whether it is feasible to apply their practice to other schools in the country is another matter.

Shades of this “modelling” is apparent in Tupas’ (2010) article where he speaks of classrooms assuming a normative practice. This means that no matter how difficult, classroom discussions need to follow standardized English. The word itself connotes elitism and exclusivity.  For somebody who believes that he/she “standard English”, it is easy to be arrogant. However, with the variety of English spoken in the country, it is difficult to assume that one’s grammar is standardized. Philippine English is considered a “language of inner circles” yet it cannot really be endorsed as a universal standard because it is, ironically, a resistance against Standard English. To Filipinize English would be to use the language to narrate and explain Filipino traits and identity.

A study on the usage of English in a Singaporean setting shows the struggle as to whether to teach the Standard English form, or to teach it as form (using it as a frame of reference for “localized” English”). As the study reveals, educators are willing (and need to be) more forgiving towards non-native speakers that they may commit. As an English teacher, one is obligated to correct students for using non-standardized version of the language but not to the point that the student becomes filled with apprehension and shame that he refuses to speak in English anymore. Taking into account the “norms”, I have to give the student credit for at least attempting to express his thought. The syntax may not be correct but as long as it can be understood, then it is acceptable. For example, some of my students are fond of tweeting “I am craving for (insert food here)”. Though grammar rules dictate that they drop “for” since craving is a transitive verb, I cannot penalize them for using the word that way. It could be an effect of how sentences are constructed in Filipino with “for” replacing “ng”.  Yes, I need to remind them that “for” is unnecessary in the sentence but common sense already tells me what they mean: they have a hankering for a certain food. To paraphrase Tupas (2010), Filipinos have every right to use Filipino English in their own way.

References

Ricento, T., & Hornberger, N. (1996). Unpeeling the onion: language planning and policy and

the ELT professional. TESOL Quarterly, 30(3), 401-427.

Tupas, T. R. F. (2010). Which norms in everyday practice - and why? In A. Kirkpatrick (Ed.).

The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes (pp. 567 – 579). New York and London:

Routledge.

Reclaiming the local in LPP: Images