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.