August 27th, 2012
Jenkins- Who Speaks English Today?
The article
talks about the many different categories of how speakers use the English
language. I have heard all of these but I never thought to explain EFL as a
language that has no use in the country you are from. The article says that foreign
language learned “serves no purpose” but goes on to say this is not the case
anymore which I completely agree with. Although I have taken about 6 years of
Spanish classes, I am still not fluent in the language. But because Spanish is
being a largely used language in the United States, I could use it while
talking to native speakers. I know in many professions it is recommended that
you know another language in order to speak with customers, patients or
students. There are so many different varieties of how people speak the English
language. For example, I was watching “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” on TLC the
other day. The show follows a six year old pageant girl and her family through
their journey in the pageant world. While watching, English subtitles appear on
the television in every episode because you can’t really understand what they
are saying. Their accents are so thick and they run their words together so
what they are trying to say doesn’t come off correctly. I think TLC uses the
subtitles in order to help others who can’t understand them. English spoken in
Boston sounds differently than English spoken in the south or the Midwest. As a
future teacher I am happy to read that other subjects are also trying to teach
English along with a different subject area. It really does make things easier
for the English teacher when other teachers pay attention to correct grammar, punctuation
and run-on sentences.
Kachru
divides World Englishes into three concentric circles, the Inner Circle, the
Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle. The three circles 'represent
the types of spread, the patterns of acquisition, and the functional allocation
of English in diverse cultural contexts. The Inner Circle is developed, the
Outer Circle is developing and the Expanding Circle is where English is spoken
as a foreign language. Although I have never seen this circle model, it is said
to be very popular and helpful. I think it is good for English teachers to see
this model in order to help their ESL students and understand how their
language has developed or is still developing. However, there are many problems
with this model. There are many grey areas to the Inner Circle and the Outer
Circle. The model also doesn’t take into effect that some students grow up bilingual
or multilingual. Sometimes that can make it difficult to put that student into
a certain class and decide which of their spoken languages are an L1, L2, etc.
Many scholars think that the model needs to be revamped and changed in order to
have fewer problems with it. Acrolect is the standard use of English and
basilect is the colloquial use of language. Acrolect is used for international
and formal communication. I think that in order to communicate internationally
the communication needs to be formal so perhaps that individual can understand
how to use English correctly, especially if it is being used as a lingua
franca. “The main criterion, other than proficiency itself, is that they have
no strong regional accent or dialect.” What do we recognize as proficient or
not when it comes to students speaking English internationally? All of the
models for language proficiency and for English speaking countries have
problems so which ones should we believe? Do they all have the same ideas or do
they have many different ideas? Some of the models give a historical
perspective of how English is spoken or is being developed in different
countries but others focus on how proficient people are in English. The models
can be quite confusing and I don’t know if an English Language Learner should
even refer to them for any reason because they can be hard to understand.
