Kuma & Celce-Murcia

Kuma's article mentions the shifts that TESOL theories have undergone in the past few decades. One of the important points he makes is that critical pedagogy theories have been a strong focus which prompts new ways of looking at classroom practices.Kuma makes note of a 1999 article by Canagarajah, where he communicates an importance of a "reflexivity on the strategies and discourses that students bring with them" as well as "productively exploiting students own cultural and linguistic resources" (Kuma 70). Lin (1999) also mentions importance of  connecting with students to help them transform their attitudes, disposition, skills, and self-image. The focus on the learner made me think of the article we read last semester and discussed last class, and indeed the same article by Bonny Norton is quoted in this article. Exploring the local realities and backgrounds that students implant into their language learning experience can help an English language instructor provide the best methods for the students and enable them to make their vision of their L2 identity clearer.

In the second article, which discusses methods for language teaching that are no surprise to me, the humanistic-affective approach stuck out to me due to its focus on the learner and making meaningful connections through self-actualization, respect, and a nurturing class atmosphere. I feel it is related to the idea of working to help students create meaningful identities and attitudes in L2 learning. Something else that also stuck out to me was the mention of semantic identity being emphasized through the communicative approach rather than simply the linguistic skills.

Anthology Chapters 1 & 2

I liked how in-depth these first two chapters went into choosing and construction effective pedagogical practices.  I was able to visualize examples of them not only thinking about an ESL classroom but another foreign language classroom, such as Spanish, as well. Something that stuck out to me was Edward Anthony's (1963) idea that a method was actually a piece of a three-part hierarchy of sorts, beginning with the approach, followed by the method, and ending in the technique in which the method is executed (9). However, Richards and Rogers (1986) believe that a method is more of an umbrella term, encompassing approaches and procedures. I think that both of these definitions are valid. Both of these ideas present a method as either a part of a multi-step process or grouped together with multiple other actions. I believe that they are truly variable due to the fact that they are always changing, both in historical pedagogy and a teacher's usage of them, and the fact that "an approach to language pedagogy is not just a set of static principles "set in stone"" (11).

As I mentioned before, I like the fact that this text mentions a number of principles, meaning that these are the so-called rules that many effective language learning and teaching methods follow. Some that I found most interesting included automaticity (a timely control of the language forms, similar to fluency in my opinion), intrinsic motivation, and strategic investment. A successful teacher can inspire her students to have a high intrinsic motivation, or a motivation within themselves to succeed and a strong reason for investing in the language.

World Englishes and Culture

Although the two articles I read were very different in topic (Jenkins' discussed the concept of 'World Englishes' in great deal and was very language-oriented and ESL themed; the writing by Diaz-Rico and Weed provided a historical framework and discussion for the cultural background we may likely see in our ESL classes.) I believe that these readings are useful to the ESL educator not only independently but taken in conjunction with one another as well. By learning a basis of the history of the region and culture transported due to immigration, whether elected or forced, from which these World Englishes come, we can better understand the students in our classroom of the same origin.

I found Jenkins' article regarding World Englishes to be extremely fascinating, mainly in part due to the different graphs and charts created by theorists and linguists included. I found Strevens model of Englishes, which laid them out and connected them geographically, to be extremely cool and useful for thinking about the geographical travel that so many languages in our history experienced and how that affected the linguistic patterns and culture. Kachru, McArthur, and Gorlach, all created circle models, although these differed on their measurement and coding. Kachru has a three-circle model of World Englishes in which different Englishes are categorized as outer circle, inner circle, or expanding circle. McArthur's is called the Circle of World English, and attempts to break it down in a chart-like feature but in a circle shape. Finally, although Gorlach's model is not pictured in the article, it sounds to me to be very similar to McArthur's. Jenkins also mentions in this article not only changes that have occurred recently, but a list of McArthur's provisos regarding the problems with the common three-group categorization of "the spread of English around the world" (Jenkins 15)--ESL (English as a Second Language), EFL (English as a Foreign Language), and ENL (English as a Native Language). One example of McArthur's provisos is as such: "ENL is not a single variety of English,  but differs markedly from one territory to another (e.g. the US and UK), and even from one region with a given territory to another. In addition, the version of English accepted as 'standard'  differs from one ENL territory to another." (Jenkins 16)