Methodology in Language Learning: DEFINITION OF ME

 

Defining oneself within one’s larger social context is fundamental to human life and one such social context is one’s national identification. However, nationality is often not examined in the work on learner identity because it is assumed that race and ethnicity subsume nationality. A further reason nationality is often ignored is because it is considered to have little role in the construction of identity in an era of intense globalization. For English language learners around the world, different national identifications are available, depending on whether learners are learning within their own country, are immigrants or refugees to a new country, or are sojourning in a second country for study or work purposes. People who move to another nation must (re)define themselves in terms of their new national context. However, research shows that essential for their self-identity is their cultural identity.

A move from one’s country of origin results in abandonment of previous relationships, along with loss of daily contact with interactions that are characterized by the cultural values, beliefs, and behaviours that define one’s identity. Therefore, loss of one’s country can be a dehumanizing experience. However, many immigrants experience a conflict between the cultural identity of their home country and that of their new country of residence. This conflict can result in trying to deny their heritage and assimilate or rejecting identification with their new country. Thus many immigrants refer to themselves by the nationality of their country of origin.

In addition, for most immigrants and refugees, their identity as immigrant or refugee is externally imposed. Further, the attributes of these identifiers are imposed by the dominant group. Even their identification based on nationality may be an external construct. For example, refugees from Sudan may be identified in an English-speaking receiving country as Sudanese, when they themselves identify by ethnicity, such as Dinka, Nuer, Nuba, or Acholi. Often, refugees reject identification with the nation-state where they were born because in fact their identity as a minority in that country and the resulting persecution are what led to their becoming refugees. Such is the case for many Assyrians from Iran or Hazaras from Afghanistan.  For those learning English in their country of origin, nationality is important for their self-identity and their perceptions (or the perceptions of their nation) as to what they may be losing (or not) in acquiring English. However, with English being consumed transnationally, young people (and others) may choose to identify with the consumerism promoted by global media through choices of clothing, music, and even behaviours. On the other hand, people have agency and so some appropriate or resist identification with the global consumerist vision, especially since they have media access to a variety of alternative views.

While race is a highly contested concept, with no scientific basis, the attributes assigned to race are often socially salient. Immigrants are often assigned particular identities based on their perceived race. Immigrant Chinese young adolescents were being ascribed values of the “model minority,” that is, as being conscientious, academically inclined, and uncomplaining. In contrast, their Latin American peers were being ascribed values of “illegals,” that is, as being academic failures and lazy. Some learners resist the assigned racial identity; others deliberately choose one they identify with. Young people were invested in becoming “black” linguistically and culturally during ESL learning so as to identify themselves with black Americans. In Australia, many refugee youths from Africa reject identification with blackness, not wanting to identify with Australia’s indigenous Aboriginals. Black is in fact an uncertain and unstable racial identifier. While African refugees, other immigrants such as Haitians in the U.S., Australian Aboriginals, and African Americans may share skin colour, they have unique ethnic identities. As mentioned above, in many countries such as the U.S., ethnicity and race are often used interchangeably. [1]Still others conflate nationality with ethnicity, even when carefully differentiating race and ethnicity, however, this conflation leads to inaccurate descriptions of individuals, especially in immigrant countries where governments seek to define groups. As we saw above, nation states are not built around one ethnic group. Ethnicity results from opposition and a perceived difference because people in homogeneous societies do not identify by ethnicity or even consider they have any ethnicity. The oppositional nature of ethnicity results from power differentials in society, differences that are enacted in social interactions. So ethnicity only becomes salient in people’s lives when they and others seek to differentiate them from “the other.” So, for example, in the U.S., the federal census defines a pan-ethnic group as Hispanic. This category consists of people from a range of different countries, many of whom do identify by their heritage country. It also includes different racial groups. The pan-ethnic category of Asian and Pacific Islander also used by the U.S. census is problematic since it includes a variety of countries, whose citizens would differentiate among themselves, such as Japanese, Lao, Hmong, or Samoan. Early work on the relationship between gender and language found differences in speech patterns between men and women, such as women using more hedges, men interrupting more in mixed-gender conservations and men and women being socialized differently, with women focusing on maintaining social relationships – it may prove thet gender in and of itself does not necessarily enable (or not) second language learning. However, they note that, as a result of social norms, access to language skills may vary across gender but women are not without agency and can and do learn English to improve their conditions and to reject patriarchy. They and others have found stereotypical roles portrayed in English language teaching textbooks. Similarly, we have seen classrooms where stereotypical roles have been assigned even by teachers who would not consider themselves sexist. For example, they may call on boys more than girls or may accept a husband responding for a wife in an adult education setting.

The concern then for English language teachers is to examine their contexts to determine whether males are privileged in ways that deny females opportunities for learning the full range of English, whether the role portrayals mirror those of the wider society, and whether the women and girls in their classrooms want to accept or reject those roles.

 

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University of Oxford - post gradual studies 2009 'English Language Teaching'

 

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[1] Our views of racial and ethnic groups, other than the one(s) we identify with, are often created through the media and through the way our community is perceived by other groups. As language teachers, we need to understand the wider com munities’ stereotyping and attitudes to race and ethnicity, as well as the positioning our students adopt, in order to develop inclusive classrooms that give all learners the opportunity to succeed.