Tag: Language

ESL, Language, Policy

Who’s being “Sheltered?”

Chris Chang-Bacon

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In education, we have a popular method called “Sheltered English Immersion,” which is supposedly designed to “shelter” students who are still learning English in schools.

In my last few years of research, I’ve wondered who or what else is being “sheltered” through this approach. In my latest article, I propose four answers to this question.

1. We’re sheltering the monolingual pedagogies as the only way to teach a language.

2. We’re sheltering monolingual teachers from having to learn another language, placing the burden of change on the students instead.

3. We’re sheltering monolingual English-speaking students from having to grapple with the multilingual realities that will face them outside the walls of the school.

4. We’re sheltering monolingual policies and theories that promote all of the above as just the “norm.”

When I bring these issues up in academic circles, some wonder if the field had already “moved past” the monolingual/bilingual dichotomy. A good critique if you’re up on the latest theoretical scholarship, but less so if you spend time in U.S. classrooms where monolingual approaches still dominate. So, I dive deeper to ask “If the monolingual paradigm has largely been destabilized… what accounts for the recalcitrance of monolingual orientations in educational policy and practice?” (p. 2).

I believe the answer is that the four “shelters” above produce major advantages for the (largely white) population of monolingual, English-speakers in U.S. K-12 schools and beyond. Dive in to the article below if you’re interested (let me know if you can’t access the article). Glad to hear your thoughts!

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Chang-Bacon, C. K. (2020). Who’s being ‘sheltered?’: How monolingual language ideologies are produced within education policy discourse and Sheltered English Immersion. Critical Studies in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2020.1720259

 

Dialect, Politics, Race, Uncategorized

Shh – Don’t Say ‘Speak American’ (Out Loud)

Chris Chang-Bacon
shh3
Image credit: Christian V.

There was justified outcry this week when a New Jersey teacher reprimanded students for speaking Spanish in class. She demanded the students speak “American,” arguing that U.S. troops are “not fighting for your right to speak Spanish.”

The students staged a walk-out. There have been calls for the teacher to be censured and dismissed. These outcomes are necessary, but we must also recognize that the teacher’s rant accurately named aloud what most U.S. schools impose on students every day.

The vast majority of students in the U.S. are spoken to, taught, and assessed exclusively in English, regardless of whether English is the language through which they learn best. Whether these English-Only restrictions are actual policy, or simply monolingual inertia, students across the country are forced to “speak American” every day without anyone having to name it out loud. Continue reading “Shh – Don’t Say ‘Speak American’ (Out Loud)” →

Critical Pedagogy, Education, ESL, Literacy, Research, Uncategorized

Who Gets to be “Critical?”

Chris Chang-Bacon
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Image: Burning the “Book of Sports,” 1643

This year continues to demonstrate the importance of reading the world through a critical lens. But who gets to be “critical?” Who gets access to critical approaches to literacy versus who gets timed reading tests?

Educators who use literacy to challenge the status quo often ground their work in critical literacies. This approach goes beyond reading and writing as mechanical skills, using literacy to critique power and inequity–what Paulo Freire called “reading the word and the world.”

But what does this mean when we ask students to read the word and the world in another language?

I took up this question in a recent article for the Journal of Literacy Research. In the journal’s latest issue, Literacy Research and the Radical Imagination, I wrote alongside a phenomenal group of authors working to “radically reimagine the ways in which research can reposition people and ideas to create new and more inviting spaces for literacy.” (JLR, p. 319).

No small task. Continue reading “Who Gets to be “Critical?”” →

Policy, Uncategorized, Vocabulary

Inventing Illegality

Chris Chang-Bacon
protest1
Image Credit: May Day March

A new week, a new round of policies that endanger more than than they assist.

Through the debates that will rightly follow Trump’s latest round of immigration directives, notice who chooses to employ the term illegal vs. undocumented. And if that distinction doesn’t yet set your ears aflame, here’s one of the many reasons it should.

Earlier this fall, Emmy Award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa explained that you can identify an individual as having broken a law, but “what you cannot do is to label the person illegal.” Hinojosa continued,

“The reason why I say this, is not because I learned it from some radical Latino or Latina studies professor when I was a college student. I learned it from Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust, who said, ‘You know what? The first thing they did was that they declared the Jews to be an illegal people.’ And that’s what we’re talking about at this point.” Continue reading “Inventing Illegality” →

Conflict, International Education, Policy, Pop Culture

‘Refugee’ Revisited: Rio 2016

Chris Chang-Bacon
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Image Credit: Kirilos via Flickr

The Olympics aspire to inspire. This year, nothing has captured that spirit more than the standing ovation received by the first Refugee Olympic team at the opening ceremonies in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

One team member in particular, 18-year-old swimmer Yusra Mardini, captured the world’s attention through her story of having pushed a sinking dinghy to shore, saving 20 lives as she and her family fled Syria.

Through all the (indisputably worthy) praise for Mardini and the rest of the team, less energy has been invested in exploring the conditions that engineered such a team into existence.

International policies are accountable for forcing these athletes, and countless others, into refugee status. These policies were enacted by many of the same countries whose athletes paraded alongside the refugee team. The same culpability resides with transnational bodies such as the International Olympic Committee: How do we, for example, reconcile the paradox of welcoming a refugee team during an event responsible for displacing 77,000 more?

A partial answer comes in recognizing that “refugee” is not a nationality, a flag by which to march under, but a status we as a global community have forced upon these individuals. Continue reading “‘Refugee’ Revisited: Rio 2016” →

Dialect, Language, Politics

Political Correctness and the “War on Free Speech”

Chris Chang-Bacon
silence.jpg
Image Credit: Rebecca Barray, via Flickr

Political Diatribe. Trigger warnings. Microaggressions. Victimhood culture.

Being politically correct, or “PC,” has been all over the media this year. Some say this is the mark of a more conscientious and inclusive society, while others say we’ve gotten “too sensitive.” According to one recent presidential candidate, political correctness is literally “killing people.”

But what does being PC even mean? Merriam-Webster will tell you it’s about avoiding language “perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against,” which all sounds well and good. So why the dramatic outcry over a basic politeness virtue we teach kindergarteners every day?

The backlash usually arises when someone is called out for not being PC. In general, no one likes to have their language corrected. If someone points out a mistake in grammar or pronunciation (cue Chris discovering there’s no “x” in espresso), we’re briefly embarrassed, but we move past it. But if someone gets called out for being “un-PC,” prepare for words to fly.

So what is it that makes this correction strike so much deeper? Clearly, it’s something that goes beyond the words or “corrections” themselves to tap into dynamics of language and power. Continue reading “Political Correctness and the “War on Free Speech”” →

Pop Culture, Vocabulary

2015: A Year of Word Revolutions

Chris Chang-Bacon
fireworks
Image credit: Mamojo via Flickr

2015 was a rough year on many fronts. Dave Barry’s Year in Review humorously dubbed this year “the worst year ever” competing only with the bubonic plague epidemic of 1347.

But from the ashes of adversity, heroes are born, and this year those heroes seem to be words—or, at the very least, our thoughts about the words we use. 2015 was a year in which we brought many commonly used words into question. Here are a few of these word revolutions of 2015.

Emoji—We have to start out with the big one. Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year was… not a word. It was a delightful, multitalented emoji.

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Talk about a representation of 2015: Is he laughing? Is he crying? Is he a he in the first place? The possibilities are endless. And so are the opportunities this opens up for the use of symbols in written English. I, for one, can’t wait to someday end an academic paper with 🙏💅💁💣💥🎉🎉🎉. Continue reading “2015: A Year of Word Revolutions” →

Language

Law Voided by Missing Comma

Chris Chang-Bacon
Image Credit: Guian Bolisay
Image Credit: Guian Bolisay

Yes indeed folks – perfect punctuation is profitable.

Not only can it explain a murderous panda at a restaurant, as the old “Eats shoots and leaves” joke goes, but a similar lapse in comma decorum might even get you out of a parking ticket.

According to the Associated Press, an Ohio woman brought her parking ticket to an appeals court in West Jefferson Village, complaining that she was ticketed for parking her vehicle longer than 24 hours. She pointed that, as written, the law lists the types of vehicles subject to this rule as “any motor vehicle camper, trailer, farm implement and/or non-motorized vehicle.”

Since the woman’s car is a motor vehicle and not, as the law states (sans-comma), a motor vehicle camper, the appeals court had no choice but to throw out the woman’s ticket.

The law, I’m sure, will be swiftly revised. But in the meantime, watch out for those comma ommissions, and happy free parking to all West Jefferson-ians!

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English

Math or Maths? The Definitive Answer

Chris Chang-Bacon

Math

I say tomato; you say to-mah-to is all well and good, but when I say math and you say maths, it’s going to come to blows.

So why is it that Americans tend to call it math while those from the U.K. insist it’s maths?

The main argument, according to Dr. Lynne Murphy, an American linguist living in the UK, is that both words are abbreviations for mathematics, which is plural… or is it?

In an interview with Numberphile, Murphy stated that the problem with that argument is that mathematics isn’t plural. 

“We don’t say, ‘there are two mathematics that I need to look at.’ And when you make maths or mathematics agree with a verb you make it agree with a singular verb and not a plural one. You don’t say ‘mathematics are interesting’ you say ‘maths is interesting’… so there’s plenty of linguistic evidence that it’s singular.” Continue reading “Math or Maths? The Definitive Answer” →

Language, Politics

When is a Terrorist Not Called a Terrorist?

Chris Chang-Bacon

Drowning

“I just think he was one of these whacked out kids. I don’t think it’s anything broader than that… It’s about a young man who is obviously twisted.”

“This man, in my view, should be designated as a potential enemy combatant and we should be allowed to question him for intelligence gathering purposes to find out about future attacks and terrorist organizations that… he has knowledge of. ”

As Judd Legum of Think Progress pointed out, both quotes come from the same U.S. senator in reaction to the perpetrators of two separate national tragedies.

Both perpetrators were American citizens. Both were barely beyond their teenage years. One, however, is immediately labeled a terrorist. The other, “just one of these whacked out kids.”

One of the quotes refers to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of the Boston Marathon Bombing, and the other to Dylann Roof, the A.M.E. Church gunman in Charleston. But off course, no one needs to tell you which quote is which. Continue reading “When is a Terrorist Not Called a Terrorist?” →