Teaching English

Hello! What books would you recommend to an 13 year old girl who is learning English as a second language? What books would you recommend to an 13 year old girl who is learning English as a second language? The purpose is to stimulate her interest in English, enlarge her vocabulary and learn more grammar. The girl is kinda intimidated whenever she is required to speak English in class.

Answer:
We think the book “Star Girl” would be a great book. I’m 13 as well and English is my second language! It’s not Read the rest of this entry »

Apart from pennycook’s ideas, in my opinion, promoting the problematizing spirit can be done by identifying where we fit in these tentative four epistemological categories:(1) I know that I know;(2) I know that I don’t know;(3) I don’t know that I know; and (4)I don’t know that I don’t know.They are not necessarily sequaenced as such. In fact, as the discussion unfolds, these four aspect can be made sense of variably with mine being one among other possibilities.

I know that I know. to ilustrate, the trait of knowing what peole have in mind is attributable exclusively with what religious people trust in: an all- knowing divine being such Allah in Islam or Jesus in Chritianity. This stance may seem arrogant when people (not a God) claim to know that they know. Pedagogically, the arrogance may be seen when a teacher claims to know that he or she is the source of knowledge, thus positioning students as inferior and dependent on the teachers. This imbalanced power relation between teachers and students is also probably best encapsulated in the following category.

I don’t know that I don’t know. Sometime ago, my academic colleague, was furious when in an international conference Read the rest of this entry »

Let me now turn our attention to my personal contemplation:I know some spiritual insights that have influenced my life, but I do not (and certainly will never) know the totality of how being”critical”reflects spirituality.

In a religiously affiliated educational institution in which I belong to at present, to be”critical” may be comprehended as putting”worldly” worldviews under the critical light of “heavenly” or “divine”dogmas. For religious people such as christians, for example, the “truth” or “reality” that they believe in is that of “not[being] conformed to this would, but be transformed by the renewing of[our]mind,that[we] may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God”(Romans 12:1,New King James Version[NKJV];see Alkitab Holy BIble,2005, italics original). In essence, for Christians the yardstick against which “truth”is measured is the Lord Jesus Christ who is believed to be “the way, the truth, and the life”(Jhon 14:6.NKJV;see Alkitab Holy Bible,2005).

And perhaps for some religious people who are often labeled as”fundamentalists”,
democracy is not a truth but theocracy is. when every aspect in religious life must submit to the authority of the Divine Being, then democracy is not only “secular” but also scandalous,if not “adulterous”,because from -, for-,and by-the-people worldview puts people at the center of attention and the Divine Being at the periphery.

Subtly and yet surely, nonetheless,a lot of scholars in social sciences and humanities oftentimes not only keep themselves at a istances from spiritual beliefs, but some even make religiosity or Read the rest of this entry »

One of the central thoughts of a Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) philosophy of language is heteroglossia (p. 263). It is a field in which the contesting forces in discourse (centripetal versus centrifugal forces) intersperse and class (p. 272 onwards). Centripetal forces contain an authoritative voice4 that usually necessitates people to obey or at least attend to, e.g., the church dogma of divinity, the teacher’s rule, the Standard English (cf. Morson, 2004, p. 320).

Centrifugal forces, on the other hand, constitute voices that attempt to question, challenge, or rebel against the authoritative voice. The centripetal force (also termed as “authoritative discourse”) and the “centrifugal force” (internally persuasive discourse”) are not only at flux but also are at odds (Bakhtin, 1981, pp. 272-273,342).

To illustrate, let us consider this made-up anecdote. While a teacher agrees not to depend heavily on lesson books,s/he at times still succumbs to them. This suggests that in his/her process of “ideological becoming” – the process in which someone “[develops his/her] way of viewing the world,[his/her] system of ideas”(Freedman & Ball, 2004, p.5), including embracing the idea of not relying too much on textbooks – the teacher encounters two forces at work. The demand of adhering to textbooks5 represents the centripetal force of the school policy and the desire to Read the rest of this entry »

Pennycook’s (2007) most current thought on a”critical philosophy of transgression” (p.43) is characterized by-non-exhoustively:

* “a way of thinking and doing that is always problematizing”(p.37)-which, in my opinion, entails thinking more questions on language teacher education, oppressive realities in language pedagogy, how to incorporate freire’s humanizing pedagogy to language learning, and problematizing the distancing from spiritual isssues in language teaching and learning, among others;

* Foucauldian “constant skepticism towards cherished concepts and modes of thought” (p.39), e.g., problematizing the definition of”poverty” that simply focuses on economic deprivation.

* “[opposing], [pushing]against and [traversing] the opressive boundaries of face, gender,and class domination” (p.40);

* “[trespassing] on forbidden territory but also attempt to think what should not be thought, to do what should not be done” (p.40), e.g., citing Jenks (2003), “… go beyond the margins of acceptability or normal performance” (Pennycook, 2007, p. 41).

In fact, Pennycook,s focus of analysis in his book is on hip-hop songs which “(perform) language and identity transgressively… (to create) new identities … as a form of local subversion…[and] disrupt forms of domination” (p. 76). “Transgressively” here is specifically exemplified by “twisting German, Turkish and American slang in resistance to the official language” by Turkish hip-hop singer in Berlin (Kaya, 2001, as cited in Pennycook, 2007, p.131)

* “…pleasure of doing things differently”, such as thinking”…which has not been thought” and”…[exploring] boundaries of thought”(p.42). Pleasure in (language) teaching, from my understanding, is taking risks through novel paths others or at least I have never passed through before. This journey requires me to go beyond the “routine culture” of schooling or teaching (cf. Kleinsasser, 1993). I remember telling my students that sometimes I used different approaches or stories for illustrating the same material as I want to prove (at least to me myself) that I have ten years’ experiences of teaching, not one teaching experience repeated Read the rest of this entry »