Theoretical background - the local in academic literature
Over the past decades, UH Manoa has attracted great numbers of international students to its campus. Students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds invest in a degree from a U.S. university and the global symbolic value of English attached to their diplomas. Taking on a pedagogical perspective, Singh and Doherty (2004) have described the moral dilemma that ESL instructors encounter in the Inner Circle settings of higher education. As they point out, “teachers are expected to reproduce Western cultural traditions and norms of academic-scholarly conduct” (p. 19), while globalization has brought about transnational flows from which new linguistic and cultural patterns emerge that do not stop at the gates of higher education. What Singh and Doherty call “teaching in a global contact zone” also has a local component. In fact, theorists of the local have pointed out that globalization cannot be understood without the local. As Pennycook (2010) puts it, “everything is local” (p. 79). For an ESL class on academic writing at UH Manoa, this means we have to acknowledge its situatedness in the local context of Hawai'i. American academic culture is a situated local practice at UH Manoa, creating demands and necessities for English language learners that are different from other situated practices on college campuses in Texas, New York and California. Canagarajah (2005) emphasizes this point as he writes, “we must interpret established knowledge for local needs and interests” (p. 14).
Standardized textbooks and curricula that are used to teach ESL academic writing, for instance, require local appropriation. Swales & Feak’s seminal textbook Academic Writing for Graduate Students is used in my own class and can be a great resource for English language learners as long as we do not use the material to construct an essentialist world for the students, in which American academic language and its genres do not incorporate what students encounter in their immediate local environment. Pennycook (2010), once more, points out that “we need both to reflect on how and why we look at languages as separate, countable, describable entities in the way we do, and to consider that languages may be undergoing such forms of transition and require new ways of conceptualization in terms of local activities, resources and practices” (p. 86). This is particularly true for the situation in Hawai'i where Standard English and the local language move along a continuum, intertwined through history and culture, and present also in the academic realm of Hawaiian higher education.
Just as boundaries between Standard English and its local language are fuzzy, so are the boundaries between academic and non-academic contexts. Sullivan (2000), from a Vygotskian perspective, cautions us to take into account the multiple, fluid identities of our students who have to perform English in social settings – the school cafeteria, the grocery store, a graduate course, a paper assignment. He makes it very clear that social context refers “not only to the classroom setting and the ways students interact within it, but also the historical and cultural context of the world outside the classroom” (p. 115). By incorporating local vocabulary and background knowledge relevant to a broad range of contexts, I hope to make space for my students’ multiple identities in ELI 83.
Finally, in advocating for localizing and decolonizing ESL at UH Manoa, it is important to be wary of the specific circumstances and demands that emerge from colonial and postcolonial settings. Canagarajah (2005) calls on us to be “sensitive to the situatedness of one’s own subjectivity” (p. 13) as we approach the local in our teaching. As a teacher committed to critical reflection who is an English L2 speaker herself, Westerner, neither Pidgin-speaker nor local, I find it important to make a commitment to the local community from within I teach. The teaching material I created will hopefully reflect this commitment.
References
Canagarajah, S. (2005). Reconstructing Local Knowledge, Reconfiguring Language Studies. In S. Canagarajah (ed.). Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. New York: Erlbaum, 3-23.
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Dangerous Liasison: Globalization, Empire and TESOL. In J. Edge (ed.). (re)locating TESOL in an age of empire. New York: Palgrave, 1-26.
Morgan, B. & Ramanathan, V. (2005). Critical Literacies And Language Education: Global And Local Perspectives. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 25, 151-169.
Pennycook, A. (2010). Language as a local practice. New York: Routledge.
Shin, H. & Crookes, G. (2005). Exploring the Possibilities for EFL Critical Pedagogy in Korea: A Two-Part Case Study. Critical Inqueries in Language Studies, 2(2), 113-136.
Singh, P. & Doherty, C. (2004). Global Cultural Flows and Pedagogic Dilemmas: Teaching in the Global University Contact Zone. TESOL Quarterly, 36(1), 9-42.
Sullivan, P.N. (2000). Playfulness as mediation in communicative language teaching in a Vietnamese classroom. In J. Lantolf (ed.). Sociocultural theory and second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 115-131.
Standardized textbooks and curricula that are used to teach ESL academic writing, for instance, require local appropriation. Swales & Feak’s seminal textbook Academic Writing for Graduate Students is used in my own class and can be a great resource for English language learners as long as we do not use the material to construct an essentialist world for the students, in which American academic language and its genres do not incorporate what students encounter in their immediate local environment. Pennycook (2010), once more, points out that “we need both to reflect on how and why we look at languages as separate, countable, describable entities in the way we do, and to consider that languages may be undergoing such forms of transition and require new ways of conceptualization in terms of local activities, resources and practices” (p. 86). This is particularly true for the situation in Hawai'i where Standard English and the local language move along a continuum, intertwined through history and culture, and present also in the academic realm of Hawaiian higher education.
Just as boundaries between Standard English and its local language are fuzzy, so are the boundaries between academic and non-academic contexts. Sullivan (2000), from a Vygotskian perspective, cautions us to take into account the multiple, fluid identities of our students who have to perform English in social settings – the school cafeteria, the grocery store, a graduate course, a paper assignment. He makes it very clear that social context refers “not only to the classroom setting and the ways students interact within it, but also the historical and cultural context of the world outside the classroom” (p. 115). By incorporating local vocabulary and background knowledge relevant to a broad range of contexts, I hope to make space for my students’ multiple identities in ELI 83.
References
Canagarajah, S. (2005). Reconstructing Local Knowledge, Reconfiguring Language Studies. In S. Canagarajah (ed.). Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice. New York: Erlbaum, 3-23.
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Dangerous Liasison: Globalization, Empire and TESOL. In J. Edge (ed.). (re)locating TESOL in an age of empire. New York: Palgrave, 1-26.
Morgan, B. & Ramanathan, V. (2005). Critical Literacies And Language Education: Global And Local Perspectives. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 25, 151-169.
Pennycook, A. (2010). Language as a local practice. New York: Routledge.
Shin, H. & Crookes, G. (2005). Exploring the Possibilities for EFL Critical Pedagogy in Korea: A Two-Part Case Study. Critical Inqueries in Language Studies, 2(2), 113-136.
Singh, P. & Doherty, C. (2004). Global Cultural Flows and Pedagogic Dilemmas: Teaching in the Global University Contact Zone. TESOL Quarterly, 36(1), 9-42.
Sullivan, P.N. (2000). Playfulness as mediation in communicative language teaching in a Vietnamese classroom. In J. Lantolf (ed.). Sociocultural theory and second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 115-131.