Week 11: English in an era of globalization

International English in Its Sociolinguistic Contexts by McKay and Heng, Chapter one: English in an era of globalization.

The reading for this week focused on English as a global language and how it has developed this status overtime.  What does it mean to be a global language? The article defined the commonly used term globalization as the reformulation of social space in which the global and local are constantly interacting with one another and that neither one should be afforded a dominant position. 

The chapter also discussed colonialism's effect on the spread of English allowing English to become a language of power and prevalence. English spread along with the empire and became associated with power because the individuals who spoke English often had more access to better jobs. This encouraged more to learn English and  unfortunately began marginalizing non-English speakers as "others". Looking at the history of English with colonialism and exploring why this language has become a global language, I for some reason kept connecting English as a global language with teaching about Christopher Columbus in schools. I believe topics like these, which may "other" a group of people is an opportunity for students to critically think and analyze. We should avoid teaching our students; "Christopher Columbus is a hero who discovered America" or that "English is the most important language globally today and everyone desires to learn it". We should have students challenge these statements, the people these statements affect and reflect.

The book also discusses the alchemy of English. It states on page 7, “English is seen as a key to knowledge and personal success”. The paragraph continues to relate English to Aladdin’s lamp- once you have it allows you to open many doors to new opportunities. English is widely spread and spoken by people around the world. Three quarters of the world’s mail is even written in English. My sister recently came home from studying abroad and while she knows a second language, she found English everywhere she went. Other friends of mine have told me they have had trouble speaking their second language abroad. Often times the person they are communicating with will begin to speak to them in English. The chapter also discussed how vital English can be in the global economy- which made me think of a movie I saw years ago. In the movie The Terminal, Tom Hanks plays an eastern European immigrant. What stuck with me from that movie, were the scenes where he struggled to communicate with those around him. It’s interesting to see that this movie showed that not being able to speak English, or Speak English to a certain degree is a disadvantage even in an airport where thousands of people from all around the world  go in and out of every day.

The chapter continued to talk about incentives for learning English including those relevant to me as a pre-service bilingual educator; economic, education and mass media incentives. I am familiar with the economic incentive to learn English. English has become very important in the world market. Even outside of the United States English is helpful for employment as we outsource and individuals attempt to enter the competitive world market. As for education incentives, English is found in classrooms around the world and there are pressures from scholars to publish their work in English first. In some cases as the chapter points out there is an extreme pressure to learn English from the government. In Chinese language-in-education policies, China requires students to study English and methods promoted in English language classrooms. These government policies also leads to pressure from parents to introduce English to their children.  In other areas English learning is in standardized tests for entry of institutions of higher education (page 14). The book uses Japan as an example as English is many times a de facto requirement for higher education. During my interview from our assignment my conversational partner who moved here from Japan last May actually brought this up. He told me that he felt pressured to learn English and that it was required because he needed to learn English to enter a university in Japan. I thought this was really interesting and was excited to see this idea in the book. Finally, the book discussed the final incentive of learning English, mass media including advertising, music, movies and electronic communication. These are great resources to use in our classrooms as ESL teachers. Much of this media is conducted in English- for example 75% of the world film making is controlled by the United States and connected with the English language. English has a great hold on many different types of media and often times these forms connect well with students and would be great to use in the classroom.  I know a family friend who learned Japanese solely because of her interest in Japanese films. Eventually she lived in japan, taught there and is now married and speaks fluent Japanese!  While pop culture is a great resources in language acquisition, the fact that English controls much of the media today is unfortunate as it ostracizes other languages.

The rest of the reading discusses the dangers of this wide spread English phenomenon. For one, widespread English leads to growing monolinguals among English speakers and an economic divide in English learning. I think these are two very important points clearly discussed in the article.Overall, I really enjoyed the readings this week as they allowed me to reflect on how my own future classroom and how I will have students view the English language and what I can do as a teacher to address student’s connotations of the English.