Week 16

The article talks about Othering. There are four parts to it that help explain. It was very interesting to read about the way the authors became interested in English even though their parents might not have spoken it, it wasn't common at the time, or for other reasons. For me, by living in the United States I knew that I had to learn English at one point. Even before I started school, I would ask what certain words were in English. Once I started the bilingual program, I was able to successfully transfer to an English-only classroom in the middle of fourth grade.


Chapter 7 talks about some topics we have already learned about. Othering is one thing they mention, which is "those from Western Inner Circle cultures are portrayed as having modern and desirable behavior while those from other cultures, who exhibit other ways of doing things, are seen as backward or lacking" (183). It talks about how teachers can evaluate and choose the right textbooks for their students so they don't only see the Western cultures and not the marginalization of local cultures. There are principles for a socially sensitive EIL pedagogy. One of those is that "EIL curricula need to exemplify L2-L2 interactions." This can help students see some examples of L2-L2 interactions and they can discuss clarifications of what was said. Another one that I liked is that "Full recognition needs to be given to the other languages spoken by English speakers." Code-switching should be encouraged and not be seen as a problem.