I cam upon a blog titled Being Multilingual during project one. However, I was waiting for a chance to write about it. The author of this blog is a freelance linguist who was born in Portugal who is well versed in her native language, English, and French. While she acquired these languages she also raised three trilingual children. What caught my eye was a blog post on her page by a guest blogger, Ng Wan Qing Jessie, who is currently working as an English language teacher. She describes, in the blog, how hard it was growing up learning three different languages and her struggle for recognition as an adequate English language teacher. Jessie if of Chinese decent and due to her outward appearance she is continuously discriminated against as incompetent. As an individual with a Master’s degree in English, I find it hard to believe that such assurances still take place today. As Motha says on page 10 of her introduction Race, Empire, and English; English is usually synonymized with Whiteness. Therefore, I suggest that this is why Jessie faces such discrimination. In her position it does not matter that she is well qualified to teach English, her outward appearance will always garner a form of assumption from another individual. Jessie even gives us her own experience with ESL literature as she tried to diversify her knowledge of her teaching experience. However, in the literature that she read of ESL/EFL teaching at the end of them they always emphasized native-speakers or native –sounding speakers. This is something that I did not know, as I read Motha’s introduction I did not realize that the ESL teachers that she spoke to were native-speakers of English. However, I believe that this might not always be the case. My question is, as I read Jessie’s guest blog was that how can we go past teacher to teacher discrimination. In Dr. Suhr-Sytsma’s class most of the readings have been geared towards reliving stigma from students, however not really on non-native teachers.
Jalyn Radziminski
4/4/2015 09:17:53 am
I find it extremely interesting that Standard English association with whiteness effects teachers as well. Baugh argues in Talkin Black Talk (reading from the course reserves) that that teachers should be educated about the history of dialects, cultures, and learning styles to infuse in the curriculum (45). It blows my mind that someone who is from a different culture who could bring this dynamic into teaching could be effected negatively...
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4/4/2015 09:19:01 am
If anything I would think this would make her MORE adequate. I wonder how this problem could be addressed
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