[My comments]: English has become an international language accepted by different peoples from different countries with their purposes of using English. I prefer to say that English should be owned by all its users regardless of variation of English, because they all make English practical and refreshed in their different way of speaking or writing. Therefore, English does not belong to one country or one nation any more. Meanwhile, English is no longer an unshakable myth to second language users, because they have integrated their local characters into global English and make English localized within their needs and tastes. For instance, China English and Korean English are highly functional “Englishes”, which has been localized closely with local culture and services people life among communication. Here, I prefer to use China English instead of “Chinglish”, because “Chinglish” are stigmatized contextualized English in China with Chinese characters in way of speaking and writing. Therefore, now, it is the right time to shake Standard English and nourish “Englishes”, because we are all owners of English!

II. Standard English and bad English in China

In China, Chinese students only learn English within two categories mainly based on different  pronunciations and word spellings: British English and American English. Therefore, in China, British English and American English are standard. Singapore English, Korean English, and other “Englishes” seldom raise Chinese students’ awareness. Like me, before coming Canada, I still hold that there are only two kinds of GOOD Englishes (American English and British English) and one BAD English ( Chinglish). There is some evidence to show how Standard English influences English learning in China from some selected Chinese and English website.

1.   Argument: standard English is the best in China

Evidence (1):  Use Standard English to welcome the 2008 Olympic Games (from:http://www.cycnet.com/cms/2004/englishcorner/digest/baokan/200505/t20050526_21491.htm)

 China Daily Website held a press conference on May 25, 2005 to formally announce an activity named “Use Accurate English to Welcome the Olympics – Public Bilingual Sign Standardization Drive” in major Chinese cities, beginning from Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, and Guangzhou.

The activity aims to prepare for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games by creating a better language learning environment, and more importantly, enhancing the nation’s international image.

Organized by China Daily Website, the activity is supported by the Cultural and Education Section of the British Council and the Public Affairs Section of the Canadian Embassy. China’s famous universities will participate as well, such as the University of International Business and Economics, Shanghai International Studies University, Xi’an International Studies University, and Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

Reportedly, students of a Beijing junior high school found 91 mistakes on bilingual signposts in the Wangfujing and Xidan areas (two of Beijing’s most prosperous areas) last year.

Such errors in English usage as these happen because there are no uniform criterion for bilingual use.

Through this activity, we at China Daily Website hope when athletes from all over world arrive in Beijing in 2008, they will find that all the English signposts have clear and standard English, whether signs at tourist sites or highway signs.

Also, China Daily Website hope the entire society will pay more attention to this problem, find the mistakes, and correct them. Let’s make a real international Beijing for the Olympic Games!

Here We Go!

For more information, please visit www.chinadaily.com.cn

[My Comments]: Yes! Beijing Olympic Games are one of the most important events in 2008 in China. Learning English is more than a fashion, because Beijing People hope to express their support towards Beijing Olympic Games through facilitating English learning. However, is it a right way to highlight to “Use Standard English to welcome the 2008 Olympic Games”? Why not welcome guests and visitors from different countries in “Beijing English”? At least, I think that “Beijing English” will be more natural and friendly, because its English with Beijing characters and tastes!

Evidence (2): Bad English Translation in China (from :http://adrianpaulhan.blogspot.com/2008/05/bad-english-translation-in-china.html)

It should be Small eating(小吃)

 [My comments]: Yes! There are obvious “mistakes” through direct translation words by words from Mandarin to English. For instance, foreign visitors from other countries may be confused by “small food”, because they may ask what “big food” is. Does it mean that their difference is on size? OF course not. However, “small food’ (it can also be “small eating” in Chinglish) reflects CHINESE way of expression in English. It proves vividly that how English are localized in Beijing, China, although it looks incorrect in Standard English. Also, in the sign for male washroom (MALEMAN), there are obvious spelling mistake, because you cannot find this word” maleman from any STANDARD English dictionary. However, it won’t influence intelligence. Furthermore it can show how Beijing People understand male as a combination of male and man, because male in English is one word, whereas male in Mandarin are two words (male and man). However, I do not agree that it will be a pity for foreign guests who visit China as newcomers. I believe the first time of “reading’ these signs maybe confuse them, but they will have a lot of fun after knowing the real meaning. Meanwhile, I believe that it’s also a way of learning Chinese culture through “bad “translation. For instance, in China we have “you don’t bird me, I don’t bird you.  Here, to bird means to care about. If foreign guests know that Chinese guys use bird to instead of care about, there will be a lot of fun in expressing this words to other friends who never come to China. Furthermore, these experiences will be very impressive and they can share these signs with their friends after going back. More importantly, It’s Beijing English!!!It’s China English!!!

[External links]:

*More funny signs pls visit: http://adrianpaulhan.blogspot.com/2008/05/bad-english-translation-in-china.html

http://elanso.com/ArticleModule/KAKAKzTDKzKzMGSYW6T3VwIi.html

*More funny Chinglish pls visit:

http://www.d000.cn/alex/article.asp?id=295

*Video shows about funny Chinglish:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nsNwrHqvI&NR=1 (recommend!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcF-_1bdnQA

[My comments about these two videos]: Yes! Foreign guests are confused by Chinglish! On the one hand, you will never see this English outside China; on the other hand, you won’t make sense of Chinglish without understanding Chinese culture. Therefore, confusion is understandable. 

Evidence (3): Beijing government attitudes towards Chinglish (from: http://elanso.com/ArticleModule/KAKAKzTDKzKzMGSYW6T3VwIi.html)

Beijing city authorities are doing their best to stamp out bad examples of “Chinglish” in the capital before the start of the Beijing Olympic Games in the summer.

[My comments]: government attitude will strongly influence the nourishment of “Chinglish” because of the powerful policy. I do not dare to evaluate Chinese government attitude about “Chinglish” with personal bias. But I think that it demonstrates that ‘Chinglish” is treated as bad English in China, because its direct translation from Mandarin to English which does not follow the canon of standard English! Also, it makes western guests confused!

2.    The counter-argument about Chinglish: In defense of Chinglish (from: http://www.cyber-courier.com/cer/chinglish/)

I know that I am stirring up a hornets nest of controversy by broaching this subject. However, “controversy” is my middle name and”mischief-making” is my game. Chinglish should not be confused with pidgin English. The latter being a contact language between people who speak different tongues. Chinglish, on the other hand, is the product of Chinese English speakers who apply Chinese syntax and grammar rules to English ones. In a sense, it is a language of the educated Chinese in China.

For all its faults and shortcomings, I think that Chinglish has taken an unfair rap. I posit a situation where Chinglish would evolve into a distinct language that ends up as the world’s second most common tongue before the end of this century. Mandarin is already spoken by 1.3 billion people worldwide. All students in China learn English and the majority of them use Chinglish. Within one or two generations, almost all Chinese will understand Chinglish. By then, Chinglish will no longer be considered as bad English for it will become another tongue. There will be good Chinglish and bad Chinglish. Of course it would be great if all Chinese speak Oxbridge English. That will never happen.

The best way to think of Chinglish is to consider COBOL, a programming language used for business applications. It is closer to English than many other high-level computing languages, but no one thinks of COBOL as English language. From a practical point of view, a busy business person would be better off  learning Chinglish, which she can pick up in days, instead of Chinese which requires months of effort just to acquire very basic fluency.

It is also a mistake to think that Chinglish phrases originated from poor English. Many were created as language humor. I plead guilty to spawning a few during my last trip to Shanghai. My favorite response to an interesting situation is to say “Lots of meaning” in English, a transliteration of  “很有意思” in Chinese. All my Chinese friends could appreciate the humor. Personally, an incidental benefit of understanding Chinglish is the ability to use translation software efficiently. I can read and speak Chinese. My ability to write Chinese has largely been revoked by Confucius. Thanks to translation software freely available on the web, I can “write” a fairly decent Chinese article by inputting in Chinglish rather than English. Inputting in correct English results in a poorer correlation. Perhaps Chinglish is a more logical language than English.

[My comments]: The key is not to reject English outright for its imperialism and language invasion or accept it wholesale without critical reflection or thinking; there should be “a third way” (Canagarajah, 1999, p. 174). The third way is to learn Standard English with a critical reflection and make English localized. In other words, on the one hand, Standard English is necessary for L2 learners, as a valuable tool, to acquire job or higher education in North America; on the other hand, English should be nourished and mushroomed within local features and different learners’ needs. Therefore, the key is not to decide choosing one English, but how to balance Chinglish and Standard English.

My Suggestion1: Become a bilingual in the world (a video show)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T632HOVQmH8

My Suggestion2: Make Chinglish more popular around the world. And Take part in Chinglish lesson right now! (a video show)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE2cNoKOIJI

[My comments]: Honestly, Chinglish is really hard to understand for those foreigners who do not understand Chinese cultural or do never visit China. On the other hand, this is a common problem, because different peoples try to make “Englishes” become their own and serve their life in communication and understanding. But it’s impossible to ask native speakers or non-native speakers to learn all these “Englishes” without deeper understanding the local culture.  However, are there possible ways to reduce language boundary to facilitate mutual understanding and communication?  Here my suggestion is that if you can’t master English, try Globish!

1.       What is Globish?

Globish is a version of the English language that uses only the most common 1500 English words. It recognizes, and forms a system for organization of, the actual English used by non-English-speakers of varying native languages when communicating with each other or with Anglophones.

Unlike many subsets of English constructed by English speakers for various purposes (Special English, Basic English), Globish is derived by non-native English speakers from the common practices they instinctively adopt when using English as a “middle ground” between many cultures. However, because only 1500 basic words define Globish, it becomes far simpler for novices to absorb those specific spellings and pronunciations than with conventional means of language learning. When using Globish, the recommendation is to stick to simple short sentences, which does not prevent the result from still being correct English; it just achieves an immediate understanding hit rate far better with, or among, non-native speakers, and does not impair the communication with Anglophones.

(More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globish)

2.       How: ( from)http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/21/features/Blume22.php

PARIS: It happens all the time: during an airport delay the man to the left, a Korean perhaps, starts talking to the man opposite, who might be Colombian, and soon they are chatting away in what seems to be English. But the native English speaker sitting between them cannot understand a word.

They don’t know it, but the Korean and the Colombian are speaking Globish, the latest addition to the 6,800 languages that are said to be spoken across the world. Not that its inventor, Jean-Paul Nerrière, considers it a proper language.

“It is not a language, it is a tool,” he says. “A language is the vehicle of a culture. Globish doesn’t want to be that at all. It is a means of communication.”

Nerrière doesn’t see Globish in the same light as utopian efforts such as Kosmos, Volapuk, Novial or staunch Esperanto. Nor should it be confused with barbaric Algol (for Algorithmic language). It is a sort of English lite: a means of simplifying the language and giving it rules so it can be understood by all.

“The language spoken worldwide, by 88 percent of mankind, is not exactly English,” Nerrière says. “I don’t think people who think this gives them an edge is right because it’s not useful if they cannot be understood by English speakers.” His primer, Parlez Globish, is an attempt to codify worldspeak and since its publication by Eyrolles in Paris last year, he says, his Web site www.jpn-globish.com has had almost 36,000 hits.

A retired IBM marketing executive, Nerrière speaks excellent English but switches to Globish if he is not getting through. “I look at their faces. Lack of understanding is very easy to decipher.”

The main principles of Globish are a vocabulary of only 1,500 words in English (the OED lists 615,000), gestures and repetition. Grammar will be dealt with in the next volume, “Découvrez le Globish,” due next month.

The Web site also includes song lyrics because Nerrière reckons this is an excellent way to learn words, even if they are not on the Globish 1,500. “Strangers in the Night” is one choice, but what is the student to do when Sinatra goes “scoobie-doobie-do”?

“Doesn’t matter,” Nerrière replies buoyantly. “I saw ‘A Chorus Line’ three or four times on Broadway and I know all the songs by heart. I never understood the line ‘If Troy Donahue can be a movie star you can be a movie star,’ but I managed to reproduce it well enough in a way it could be understood.”

The point, he says, is to reach the threshold of understanding. But neither threshold nor understanding is on the 1,500-word list. “In Globish it would be the target, the goal, the objective. I use three words to reach the point where you would be understood everywhere.”

The list goes from “able” to “zero.” Niece and nephew, for example, are not included, “but you can replace them with the children of my brother,” Nerrière says. He feels he erred in putting in both beauty and beautiful and in including “much” and “many” but not “lot.”

“Much is for ideas, many is for things you can count. A lot works for both cases, the others require a little more understanding.”

The seeds for Globish came about in the 1980s when Nerrière was working for IBM in Paris with colleagues of about 40 nationalities. At a meeting where they were to be addressed by two Americans whose flight had been delayed, they started exchanging shoptalk in what Nerrière calls “une certaine forme d’anglais perverti.” Then the Americans arrived and beyond their opening phrases, “Call me Jim,” “Call me Bill,” no one understood a word. And Jim and Bill, needless to say, did not understand perverted English.

One might say that, except for Jim and Bill of course, everyone was speaking Globish though they didn’t know it. “They all, like me, spoke low-quality English, not really Globish. One might have a vocabulary of 2,000 words, another of 1,200 and not the same words. One of the things of interest in Globish is that with 1,500 words you can express everything. People all over the world will speak with the same limited vocabulary.”

With many corporations imposing English as the lingua franca wherever their base, Nerrière sees a great future for Globish, which he has trademarked. Learning it by computer and practicing it by free-access telephone will make things even easier. And there is a new law in France that gives employees the right to 20 hours per year of instruction in a given subject.

“The idea is to increase their employability by teaching them skills unrelated to their present employment. For me, the odds of someone asking for a course in macramé are very small and the odds of asking for a course in Maltese are also small. Why not Globish? If it could be of use in this small grocery shop where I work maybe it will help me in the big hotel where I hope to be.”

is an other advantage, he argues. “At 20 hours a year you need 24 years to learn English with no result whatsoever since it would be spread too thin for the learner to remember what had been said two weeks earlier. With Globish you not only have free telephone access via the Internet but you could get cheap lessons in places like India where people speak good English and wages are low.”

Nerrière reckons that with 182 hours plus learning “Strangers in the Night,” the student should be able to communicate in Globish. It is not a pretty language – full of redundancies and lumpy constructions – but Nerrière repeats that it is nothing but a tool when proper English is not understood. “It is not the language of Hamlet, Faulkner or Virginia Woolf,” he explains.

But the worst thing for the French about this international language is that it isn’t French. Nerrière argues rather subtly that if people learned Globish, the French language would remain unsullied because franglais would die out.

“It would end this crazy French terror about English and francophonie. The French say you are killing the French language and I say, no, we are saving it from being killed by English.”

There is one possible hiccup in this scheme. The fluent Globish speaker will not be understood by native English speakers. No problem: Nerrière already is preparing a Globish version in English in addition to the Italian and Spanish editions, which will be out shortly. So he is not only protecting French from invasion but he is getting Americans to become, so to speak, bilingual.

“Absolutely!” Nerrière says triumphantly. “This is the way to get Americans to learn another language.”

External links:

http://www.jpn-globish.com/file/1500motsGlobish.pdf

http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/vangogh/555/Spell/globish.html

http://www.globish.com/

V. Term paper for EDUC714: The Equity Issue in Pronunciation for Adult L2 Learners: I Wanna Speak English without a Noticeable Accent.

[My comments]: Here I put my term paper as the last section in my portfolio, because it reflects my understanding about these “Englishes” from a post-modern perspective when I focus on detectable accents in second language learning. As I mentioned in this paper, the key is not to reject standard English outright for its imperialism and language invasion or accept it wholesale without critical reflection or thinking; there should be “a third way”. The third way is to learn Standard English with a critical reflection and make English localized. In other words, on the one hand, Standard English is necessary for L2 learners, as a valuable tool, to acquire job or higher education in North America; on the other hand, English should be nourished and mushroomed within local features and different learners’ needs.

When a fish jump out from ths original bowl, she will never know the consequence. Maybe she can find jump into a new bowl with fresh water or not. Who knows? But, at least, she is a brave fish daring to change her situation and find new way. And I want to be a small but a brave fish. –Birdie

古代传说黄河鲤鱼跳过龙门，就会变化成龙。诗经《埤雅·释鱼》中记录：“俗说鱼跃龙门，过而为龙，唯鲤或然。”清李元《蠕范·物体》写到：“鲤……黄者每岁季春逆流登龙门山，天火自后烧其尾，则化为龙。”后以“鲤鱼跳龙门”比喻中举、升官等飞黄腾达之事。后来又用作比喻逆流前进；奋发向上。

THEREFORE, the mother fish transmits the idea to become a dragon to kid fish, and tells kid fish what is wrong and what is right. Also, the grandma fish tells kid fish the benefits, if she/ he can jump over ” Long Men”.

 And then, kid fishes try to jump over “Long Men”, because they hope to change their destiny, because they strongly believe that if they can jump over this entrance gate, they will be successful.

However, most of kid fish maybe couldn’t jump over “Long Men”, because it’s too high to touch. They may feel frustrated, because they believe that they have no more opportunities to become dragon.

However, they never realize these successful fishes may have become victim of higher eduction in China, because they have never critically think about thier success (getiing higher education) which reinforce canon of the society!

Because it believes that memory is important and that the teaching of cultural heritage provides knoweldge of a common narrative( Bloom, 1994; Thernstorm, 1985). However, value trnsmation must include critical reflection! (Joseph, 1999)

Referecnes:

1. Bloom, H. (1994). The western canon: the book and school of the ages. New York:Harcourt Brace.

2. Thernstorm, S. (1985). The humanities and our cultural heritage, In C.E. Finn, Jr., D. Ravitch, and R. T. Fancher,     Against mediocrity: The humanities in America’s high schools. pp. 66-79. New York: Holmes and Meier.

3. Joseph, P.B. (1999). Connecting to canon. In P.B. Joseph., S.T. Bravmann, E.R. Mikel, and N.S. Green. Cultures of curriculum. Lawrence erlbaum Associates, publishers.

By Panofsky, 1999

1. A snapshot of chapter 19

l  Vygotsky’s general law of cultural development: (p. 425)

“Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice, or two planes.” (Vygotsky, 1981, p. 425, p. 163)interpersonal—intrapersonal plane. ( social interactionà individual internalization)

l   Ratner (2000) five cultural phenomena: (p. 415)

-          Cultural activities: Who get failure and rejection in cultural activity of schooling Who gets success and affirmation?

-          Cultural values and meanings: Who get positive and desirable ones? Who get negative and aversive ones?

-          Physical artifacts: Who get valued artifacts?

-          Emotions and motivations: Who get positive emotions/motivationsà higher education? Who get negative emotions/motivationsà drop out schools?

-          Agency: strong and positive sense of agency Vs. weak and incapable learning agents

l  Sociological keywords from Bourdieu:

(1)    Social space ( p. 416)

(2)    Habitus:p419

 Fields: semi-autonomous, structured social spaces characterized by discourse and social activity( Bourdieu, 1991; Bourdieu& Wacquant, 1992) [ Carrington ad Luke, 1996, p. 100]

Capital:

(3)    Logic of symbolic violence (p. 416)

2. 3 case studies:

* Rist (1970/2000)

*Wilcox (1988)

*Collins (1986)

3. Activity (group discussion with different case analyses)

(1) Rist’s case( p. 418-420): (P. 418)Table 1 students mistreat the Table2 and 3 classmates physically and verbally. The table2 and 3 students also mistreat each other, but never mistreat Table 1 classmates. (Why?) Clue: teacher’s different treatment of Table1,2,3.

[Class distinction is reflected in the teachers’ treatments of students.]

(2) Wilcox’s case (p. 420-422):The higher-status students are given more opportunities to develop speaking/presenting skills in classrooms. Meanwhile, they are given considerable focus on the future. (Why?) Clue: teacher’s different expectations between higher-status students and lower-status students.

(3) Collins’s case (p. 422-424): Collins shows that teachers respond differently to equivalent errors between high-group readers(HGR) and low-group readers(LGR). (Why?) Clue:  HGR are from white professional families; LGR are from black working-class families. (p. 423) Teachers’ different ways of assistance.

<Summary>

(1)    Different expectations; Different treatment; different ways of assistance.

(2)    Schooling is not a “null space”, which translates as “a ticket” for a better job. Students, who are outsiders to acquire educational success, do not see any substantive value in the schooling, because “passing” courses is not enough for higher education. ( to change their destination and social class).

4. Figure out problems:

Problem1:

Teachers engage the high-group students in more prestigious cultural activities, which offer greater opportunities for academic learning, whereas the stigmatized lower-group students enact either active or passive resistance in the forms of disengagement. (p. 419) + p. 421

Problem2:

A high-group child having a learning problem will receive multiple forms of assistance until the problem is solved, whereas a low-group child will receive no assistance because the problem is seen as “to be expected” and “to be inevitable”. (p. 421)

Problem3:

Working-class children go into vocational tracks, whereas students whose families are well-educated are destined for higher education. (Green, 1999, p. 45). Furthermore, “slower” students do the “baby work” (Panofsky, 2003, p. 421). Consequently, the academic gap between two groups grows wider and wider. (Question: what’s the possible final result for wider and wider academic gap?)

5. How to solve these problems?

(Video Show) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YIwlajUpfY  (teacher’s expectation influence students’ behavior)

(1) equal expectation

(2) more assistance to low-group children.

(3) teacher-student relationship shift ( teacher’s role)

For “problem” students: (In China, they refer to drop out schools and cannot finish their study but enter society earlier)

They needs: (from a teacher’s role)

-          Care about them both life and study

-          Encourage them ( show high expectation)

-          Pay for more patience

-          Give them “wait time”  ( 冰冻三尺非一日之寒translation: Rome was not built in a day. Or Ice three feet thick is not frozen in a day.)

-          Share more widely decision-making to diminish inequalities of power and influence. ( Mikel, 1999, p. 118) [The challenge is how to share, through what way to share decision-making.]

-           

6.       Conclusion:

(Video Show) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgoQoQVbA20 (education is not for the poor).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&feature=related (a version of student today)

References:

Carrington, V. and Luke, A. (1997). Literacy and Bourdieu’s sociological theory: a reframing. Language and education. 11(2). Pp. 96-112

Mikel, E. (1999). Deliberating Democracy. In Joseph, P.  Bravmann, S.,Windschitl, M., Green, N. (ed.) Cultures of curriculum. LEA. Pp.115-136