English as a Lingua Franca

English as a Lingua Franca

Week One Compulsory Blog Post: UIC Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language in Bilingual and Multilingual Contexts

October 9, 2022

I have not posted on this blog for a LONG time. I recently enrolled in a masters program at Universitat Internacional Catalunya in Language Acquisition and Teaching English as a Foreign Language. One of my courses, Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language in Bilingual and Multilingual Contexts requires that we post weekly blog responses to themes covered in class. This will be my first blog post for this class about ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) and my opinions. The photo is from my garden.

I was tasked to write about my opinion of English as an academic lingua-franca. My opinion is that language changes, as all languages change. Does that mean that I think we should teach a modified variety of English to non-native speakers to ease communication? No. Do I think that we could teach ELF to native English speakers so that they know how to communicate more successfully with non-native English speakers? Yes. My academic and professional life has been a constant mixture of English and Spanish and there is a bit of translanguaging that I use now that I did not use in the past. It is a teacher's job to help the student reach their individual language goals and do what they can to help the student on their path to success.

Language Acquisition

This week we have also been looking at the acquisition of languages and how that relates to a student’s age, language repertoire, how closely related that language is to another language, and the setting. I have studied Spanish collegiately and lived abroad for many years. In my collegiate studies, my Spanish professors always had strict, no English in the classroom rules. Even in their offices, we could not speak English with them. There was a clear distinction between when to use which language in my brain. When I lived abroad, I would speak Spanish with my Ecuadorian friends, but I worked in a school and spent most of my work day speaking English. I encouraged students to only speak English with me during and outside of class as well.

On top of my studies in Spanish I also took French classes while studying at a University in Connecticut. This class was taught in English and French since it was beginner level. I remember, one of my professors actually mentioned to me, that when I did not know a word that I wanted to say in French, to make an educated guess on if I thought the word would be cognate with the English or Spanish word and say that with a French accent. This trick, using my translanguaging repertoire, significantly helped me grow my French vocabulary. Compared to when I continued studying French later in life in Ecuador. These classes were being taught in Spanish and French. It was easier for me to pick up certain grammar rules as a student because I was already thinking in a language other than my L1 and a language more closely related to French. Reflecting on my history with two other languages to absorb and understand new material. Before receiving this advice from my professors and language instructors, I was not always aware of my passive vocabulary.

English as a Lingua Franca

When I was teaching English at a University in Ecuador, I taught levels A1 through C1. I believe that it is important to teach students the grammatical structures and rules to follow before introducing slang that they might hear spoken in pop culture. Same goes for vocabulary. I encouraged students to constantly be learning new words and idioms before introducing ideas from outside the curriculum. I do agree that there are some details in the English language that may be unnecessary for simply being understood as a non-native speaker. Such as a perfect accent.

When you are teaching one group of students all the same nationality and all with the same L1, there will be common mistakes that the students make. As a teacher, you will learn how to pick up on these, teach the students, and fix those grammatical or pronunciation errors. What is fun about teaching is that the students will always keep you on your toes, regardless of what is going on. As an ESL teacher, you need to help your students reach their academic goals with the language. To do that, you sometimes have to teach them not only how to communicate well, but also how they will be assessed on an exam.

I will never forget, there was one first day in class when we were all going around introducing ourselves. My student D stood up, introduced himself, spoke fluent English and to my surprise had a British accent. I was taken aback because until then, I had not experienced a student with a British accent in Ecuador. Initially, I thought he was only trying to sound British. I had yet to realize that his parents both taught at the same University as I did, and his mom is in fact British. At this University we followed Cambridge curriculum, but taught American English. This being said, there were several times in this class with D that I had to explain how something he said was correct, but it was the British way of saying something, either, pronunciation, diction, or grammar, and that for the test, students had to give the answer using the traditional American English being taught.

This is an example of a time when the University I was working for required students to learn the “proper” American English being taught. As teachers, we graded our students' written exams on grammar and vocabulary. There was a spoken component of the exam and intelligibility was one of the factors that affected their note. However, the principal was that students are taught and examined in the correct way before being taught other variations that are also acceptable, but not on the test. According to the administration at this school, the main goal was to prepare students for the next level ESL and to perform well on the test in American English. If there ever was extra time I would use that to teach topics more related to student’s personal goals with learning English and add fun lessons and activities about other variations of English.

Some language instructors and people who specialize in ESL believe that it is okay to disregard certain grammar rules while teaching if your goal is for students to communicate more easily because they will be speaking with other non-native English speakers(ELF). One of these things is countable versus uncountable nouns and their quantifiers. As well as articles and prepositions.

The amount of time I have spent teaching classes about countable and uncountable nouns and the correct quantifiers is really unmeasurable. Is it absolutely necessary that we use the correct quantifying words or phrases? Not really. Native speakers make mistakes all the time and I can tell you-as someone from the United States, that the average “American” would not be able to tell you what a countable or uncountable noun is let alone why we use specific quantifiers with each. However, I would think that a student or a non-native speaker, may get a little confused (depending on their level of ESL) if someone is making a lot of mistakes with plural nouns and the correct quantifiers.

As for prepositions, a native English speaker will understand exactly what a non-native speaker is trying to say regardless of if they use the correct preposition. Sometimes, this can be comical because of idioms. If someone uses the wrong preposition, it may completely change the meaning of the verb, and the speaker could have said something totally unintentionally.

Translanguaging

One of my current roles is in a public high school in Connecticut working as a Bilingual Intervention Specialist. I work with all of the Spanish speaking students, many of whom are recent arrivals, and some have been in the United States for a while. My entire day is back and forth interpreting for students and teachers. Currently, listening to the words that my students, all Spanish speaking immigrants choose to use in English or in Spanish depending on the context and who they are speaking with (code switching). I have been told to not put a huge stress on students learning specific words in Spanish, but in the target language - English. In fact, at times speak “Spanglish”. Meaning, if a teacher is instructing students on how to find the volume of a cube, rather than saying to the class “vamos a calcular el volumen de un cubo usando multiplicación. La fórmula es longitud por anchura por altura”. I would more likely use the specific vocab words in English, with the goal being that the students learn these words in the target language - English. This being said, I would say something similar to “vamos a calcular el volumen de un cubo usando multiplicación. La fórmula es length multiplicada por width multiplicada por height”. This way the student now knows the words length times width times height, which are not cognates between English and Spanish, as many of the other words in those directions are. This vocabulary is something that these students will see in future math classes where a Bilingual Interventionist or a Bilingual Teacher may not be present.

The high school I teach at has an objective of multilingualism and multiliteracy for the students. My job as a Bilingual Interventionist is to make the class material comprehensible and enhance the students' development of the target language. What I am currently practicing goes against my training of keeping the two languages separate and encourages a more holistic approach. Basically, teaching flexible bilingualism and soft boundaries between the two languages. These boundaries are going to be different for me and for my students. The words that I am choosing to say in English are specific vocabulary words that we want the students to learn in English. Whereas, if I were speaking naturally, I would not choose to have these specific words in English.

As educators, we must be models or have models for our students to help set appropriate goals for learning ESL. If this school had no native Spanish speaking bilingual teachers or employees there would be no realistic models for these students. The goal is for the students to be multilingual, yes, but that does not mean they have to sound native. Not to mention that may not be the student’s goal and someone’s accent is also part of their identity. Having a Bilingual Interventionist and or Bilingual Teachers allows the school to pay attention to the student’s multilingual repertoire and not only the target language that they may not be as proficient in. Translanguaging and someone’s brain moving from one language to another is normal language behavior, especially when learning a new language or moving between different geographies or social groups that speak different languages. Showing students that I translanguage not only teaches the students vocabulary in the target language, but also helps students build a relationship between the two languages in their own head. This allows students to decide what feels comfortable to them and in what context.

Further on code switching and how I currently translanguage. I would not encourage a student of mine to speak Spanglish if they have not already mastered English. I do give my high school students the opportunity to speak English with me, but they primarily prefer Spanish. With many of my latinx friends, we speak Spanglish. The traditional part of me prefers to speak an entire sentence in one language before switching to another. However, there are some words or phrases that just sound better in the other. For example, while teaching in Ecuador, I continued to study French. I was good friends with my French teacher and he taught me that another way to say sunbathing in French, traditionally “prendre le soleil” can be said as “lézarder”. Translation - “lizarding”. We thought that was funny. So we adopted the word “lizarding” to our active English vocabulary between friends. Also, at times, when I was living abroad there were words that I maybe never learned in my native language. This will be similar to the students who I am teaching in high school and intentionally giving them the vocabulary words in English.