week 8 Bilingual Education in the Middle East --YiYi

   The bilingual education in the Middle East gets lots of influence from their language Policy. For most researchers, this region hereto couldn't be analyzed owing to the resistance to colonialism and foreign intervention. When it comes to bilingual education, it's not as simple as English-Arabic module, it also involves the models of another minorities languages sets. And when people talk about this issue, it includes Egypt, totally call it the Middle East and North Africa(aka MENA).

   Throughout the time, MENA has a long history of religious conflicts, colonization turmoils, and civil wars. Researchers mark here by economic, religious and linguistic differences. There are three salient aspects of the language policy discuss.

1. Diglossia.

    It means the "two or more varieties of the same language are used by some speakers under different conditions"(Ferguson,1959). Students from lower socioeconomic background usually have difficulties learning the combination of the Arabic script and syntax on top of their native dialect. In reality, the colloquial vernaculars are not always excluded, but some exam, e.g. OECD PISA only tested formal version( Fusha). And it can mislead the students' authentic performance.

2. Arabization.

    It's controversial that the language policy designed to strengthen the status of Arabic. The original attempt was to reverse language shift made by colonialism and modern globalization. There are some brief introductions here.

1) Arab Maghreb Union(AMU). It was colonized by France and French became the main language of education, administration, and media.  When Morocco and Tunisia were independent in 1956 and Algeria in 1962, the union started to adopt a policy of Arabization. It is striving to create a monolingual nation but faces many challenges of promoting multilingualism.

2) Lebanon. It gained independence in 1943 and made Arabic the only one official language then, later on, suffered civil war from 1975 to 1990. The war weakened the public education system and gave away many opportunities for private institutions to teach English or French. Even the authority would like to revive the status of Arabic, English and French are used in schools for mathematics and sciences.

3) Israel. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Jewish national movement successfully revived the Hebrew language but effaced much of the linguistic variety of both Palestinians and the Jewish people. After Israel's independence in 1948, they maintain the Hebrew as the majority language but have the fear of its status.

4) Libya. The locals show the negative attitude toward English learning because of some anti-American feelings. Therefore it's a taboo if people speak English in public.

5) Other MENA countries, the establishment of Arabic language academies in Amman, Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo successfully reinforce Arab identity through Arabization.

3. Minority language, multilingualism and language education

    After independence, many linguistic minorities were often oppressed due to be seen as an obstacle to the uniformity.  There is still some minority right far from being addressed. However, following the situation of unemployment, international education and the internet use, people start to adjust their perception of foreign language and bilingual education. For instance, Berber, the language of almost half of the population was given official status in 2011.

    The research of language education in MENA is pieces due to political instability, for instance, ISIS organization. The result is often difficult to analyze because of different interpretation and evaluation among groups in MENA. Besides, war zone keeps researchers from getting reliable information.

    In my conclusion, the bilingual education history in MENA goes along with their religious, political history. Limited accountable resources impede the understanding of full picture across the whole region, but foreign language learning is gaining foothold slowly but surely.

week 7 study activity

     The speech of President Barack Obama on Bilingualism is a good reminder in future education and global business. Though English is the international language, lots of people still can't perfect it whereby make some misunderstanding and unnecessary hatred. Or people with nepotism favor their same-language fellows even they possess English proficiency. One documentary my English teacher shared in class was once the American agents didn't have any reaction when China agents were plotting a conspiracy against the U.S., it turned out the code was designed based on Chinese language and they were warned by Hong Kong agent. I can't prove its credibility, but this incident brought up a expanded issue that people should aware of the importance of understanding multilingual not for personal interest but safety. "Language identify...... Ideally, to create coalitions, foster friendships, and to produce peace, requires the use of languages other than English." (p. 118)

     After reading the chapter 6, it gave me some comforts, like the age issue isn't the main reason causing failure of second language learning. On top of it, also surprised me is the scenario of translation jobs in America "tend to be filled by foreign-born individuals". Analyzing the reasons, there are not so many students and adults possess the qualified language level.

    So no matter for societal or individual reason, IF I am in the future classroom, I believe I will utilize many advanced devices to foster students' learning. At that time, I believe students can get personal multi-functioning, wearable gadget. They can spend some time in class with me face-to-face literally or interact with anyone in the world in designated period. Even better, they can have personal tutor to assist their language acquisition based on their embedded app in wearable gadget. The personal tutor can provide them the usage of accurate grammar, sentence construction and appropriate vocabulary. In the whole class activities, I will motivate students and foster learning by taking them to virtually foreign country when we put on the futuristic goggles at the same time. They will have authentic experience and encourage them to keep learning.

      Ultimately, people might not need to learn foreign language, like the scene of movie "Matrix", one chip installed in your brain can empower you speak any targeted language or help you transmit your idea without verbal version just like teleport. The assessment will be bi-polarized into two categories: extreme complicated or no assessment any more. During that time, learning language might become a medical therapy for Alzheimer or personal research.

week 5 oral presentation

Here is the link,

http://youtu.be/nNV1ZfpJYSc?hd=1

week 5 reading assignment

    "Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence" is a food for thought, it also displayed many ugly truths in our society. Or on the other hand, it showed that we are progressing now. I also made mistake when I was young toward the local language due to the subjective and objective circumstances. 

    My father was a Chinese from mainland China, he traveled to Taiwan with the political party in 1938. During that time, Taiwan has just ended the Japanese colonization and became a new foothold for China military ( during that time, most soldiers would like to fight back when they prepared enough resources. It's the most simple explanation for China-Taiwan history and stance). Our government banned local language--Taiwanese due to the anxiety of being overthrown by Taiwanese if they plotted through their language. Not only in my family but also in school, the students would get punished when they spoke Taiwanese. 

     Ironically, my mother is a Taiwanese. She could speak Mandarin in front of us and chat with her family in Taiwanese. Most educated people know that, in Asia countries, we have been influenced by the patrilineal idea which means the women don't have a say in the family. And it yielded a very unreasonable outcome, even I am a female I also belittled my mom and even the language which my mom spoke. I had a stereotype against Taiwanese language, I didn't appreciate the beauty and even looked down on people speaking Taiwanese. The more trophies of speech contest I won, the stronger concept I formed, because one of the contest standards was the pronunciation correction. Until two years ago, one of my friends told me he did some research and found out Taiwanese could derive back to Shang(商)  Dynasty (3,500 years ago), and the language we use now, so-called Mandarin is much younger compared to Taiwanese. The finding shocked me and push me to ponder how long the bias I could hold and judged people by their languages. 

     According to the article, I reflect myself,  when we evaluate a language, why do I classify them into high-low section rather than equally different categories? Do I really want to hang out with friends who always caution wordings and try to maintain their reputations or can I accept some rude critics but from their heart?  Do I really know all of the languages? Do I know the speakers' historical background? Why couldn't Kpelle speakers make the free recall in first time but immediately catch up after demonstration? Why can't they have no idea about category?

    In the content, I also realized the well-trained interviewer is really crucial in a test. Like the scenario mentioned, the result could be so different if the interviewer could set a proper environment for the participants and elicited more-close-to-real responses. The imprudent conduct or arbitrary wrap-up could deviate our direction to perfect our world.

    No language is better than others, every language plays an significant role at some particular time in specific area. Some languages are still live but some are forgotten, but all of these wove the prosperous history.

Reference

1.     Santa Ana, Otto (editor): Tongue Tied: The lives of multilingual children in public education. Chapter 8. Lanhan, 2004. (ISBN: 0742523829)

week 4 reading response

Review the key points in Chapter 8 "Key Points in this Chapter" pg. 180

Choose one key theory and summaries: "The Thresholds Theory" or "The Balance Theory"

    Chapter 8: The Cognitive Theories of Bilingualism and the Curriculum gave me a rough but vivid expression about how people treated bilinguals in history. No wonder I saw so many references mentioned about the bilinguals' disadvantage. In this assignment, I chose the thresholds theory because not only it's trendy but also gave me more imagination to think about our brains. 

    In the threshold theory, our brains or you can say the operation center has three stories. The upper floor represents better or higher capability of language application. Not like monolinguals go straight to the top level, bilinguals have two operators racing to the goal. These two operators are frienemy, sometimes they cooperate sometimes they are against each other. But basically, they need to correspond and complement each other, if both of them stay on the first floor, that would be the worst situation which means the owner of this center would far behind s/he age-appropriate content. Even if any of them reach the top roof without the other one, they still can't make most of the operation center unless both of them surpass the obstacle reaching the peek. To some extent, if researchers were right, it will take more than 5 years to complete this mission. 

    Based on the theory, it generated further question: where are the thresholds? Namely, what is the benchmark to define balanced bilinguals? So the BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills) and CALP (Cognitive/ Academic Language Proficiency)  were naturally delivered. Though CALP left some controversial point to be clarified and had some limitations in it, e.g. this theory gave special status to educated, middle-class language style(p.172) or didn't count culture, social, political, community, teacher expectations, and home factors(p.178) in, the fundamental idea provided a mapping scaffold for teachers to have a deeper understanding of students' false performance. Applying the two dimensions diagram also enables educators to think about the curriculum design and assessment with ideas of cognitively un/demanding communication and context embedded/reduced communication.

Reference

1.Baker, Colin: Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilinguals (5th edition). Multilingual Matters. Tonawanda, N.Y. 2011. (ISBN: 9781847693556)