PEDAGOGICAL DISCUSSION: ANTI-DISCRIMINATORY EDUCATION IN MULTILINGUAL SCHOOLS FOR FURTHER REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
المؤلف:
Tara Goldstein
المصدر:
Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual School
الجزء والصفحة:
P122-C6
2025-10-01
279
PEDAGOGICAL DISCUSSION: ANTI-DISCRIMINATORY EDUCATION IN MULTILINGUAL SCHOOLS
FOR FURTHER REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
Thinking About Accent and Race: Personal and Professional Reflection. In her book, English With an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States, Rosina Lippi-Green reports on a research study undertaken to see how American university students' expectations of instructors born outside the United States played into their attitudes and learning experience.1 Sixty-two undergraduate students who spoke English as their primary language participated in the study. Each student listened to a 4-minute lecture on an introductory topic that was prerecorded on tape. While listening, the students saw a projected slide photograph, which was meant to represent the instructor speaking. Both of the recordings heard were made by the same speaker, who was a primary speaker of English from central Ohio. However, there were two possible projected photographs: half of the students saw a slide of a White woman lecturer, and the other half saw a woman similarly dressed and of the same size and hair style, but who was Asian. Immediately after listening to the 4-minute lecture, each student completed a test of listening comprehension. Students were also asked to fill out a questionnaire that asked them to rate the accent (speaks with an American accent or speaks with an Asian accent) and the quality of teaching of each speaker.
The results of the study showed that the perceived race of the instructor, on the basis of the photograph, influenced the ways students evaluated the instructors' language use. Some of the students looking at an Asian face were convinced that they were hearing an Asian accent despite the fact that the prerecorded language they had listened to was that of a primary English speaker from Ohio. Other results of the study showed that overall, students scored lower in the comprehension test when they believed that the lecturer was Asian. In commenting on these results, Lippi-Green suggests that the students' preconceptions were strong enough motivators to cause them to construct imaginary accents and fictional communicative breakdowns. Applying the findings to our everyday world of teaching and learning, Lippi-Green also suggests that although primary speakers of English are usually given the benefit of the doubt to whether or not they are good teachers and communicate effectively, ESOL speakers are often not give a chance at all.
Thinking about the study that has just been described, what kinds of accents do you perceive difficult to understand? Knowing that your own negative expectations of being able to easily understand these accents might lead to a breakdown in communication, what steps can you take to ensure that you assume a reasonable amount of responsibility for working toward mutual understanding?
Thinking About Positive Evaluations of Different Accents: Personal and Professional Reflection. As discussed earlier, Rosina Lippi-Green tells us that if we are particularly positive about the set of social characteristics we see in another person, or if the purposes of communication are especially important to us, we will accept more of the burden. Under what circumstances, if any, have you worked to accept more of the communicative burden than you typically do? Why do you think you worked so hard to understand what was being said? How might your answers to these questions impact on your teaching practice?
Thinking About Linguistic Privilege. In the play, Hong Kong, Canada (included in Appendix A), Joshua and Sarah have the privilege of not having to worry about being understood or performing effectively in a second or other language. They also don't have to worry about being able to understand the teacher or other students at school. Wendy and Sam do. Wendy and Sam also have to make difficult decisions about which language(s) to speak at school. Thinking about the linguistic privileges Joshua and Sarah have as Standard English-speakers at their school, keep a week-long list of the ways Standard English speakers are privileged in your own school and community settings. To illustrate, "Standard English speakers don't have to worry that people in the audience will wrinkle their noses, shrug their shoulders, or shake their heads during their oral presentation." How might the findings from your list inform the pedagogical choices you make in your own classroom?
1See Lippi-Green (1997, pp. 126-130) and Rubin (1992).
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