English around the world

I don't usually read BoingBoing any more, but some pals shared this link about a billboard in Pakistan. I also don't usually read comments on anything, but these raised the interesting question of why a billboard in Pakistan is in English, as well as some more complex discussion about women and sexuality in Pakistan, and perception vs. reality. I know almost nothing about Pakistan, really, so this is kind of cool.

I do know one guy from Pakistan, a longtime friend of my friends here, though I've never met him in person (and probably won't for a while, unless I go to Pakistan). I've often wondered why he speaks native-level English, or why all his Facebook posts and their comments from other Pakistanis are all in English. If a big chunk of the country reads English and even more of them speak it, that pretty much explains it, and in fact English is Pakistan's official language, along with Urdu.

This reminded me of an old link about why Chinese will not become the next world language (short version: as a language, it's too hard, and there are few native speakers of Standard Mandarin), and I started to think about why I'm surprised that much of Pakistan would speak English. I realized that my time overseas has been spent partly in Europe, where it seems that people have always been habitually multilingual by necessity, and then in Mexico and Chile, where very few people speak English. While I know intellectually that English has just grown and grown as the world's lingua franca, my experiences outside the U.S. have nonetheless left me surprised to discover people in other countries speaking English.

linkfarming

The Internet has been busy!

• Thailand takes moral panic to a new level.
• Different maps of Europe.
• Incentives in baseball: batters about to finish the season with a .299 or .300 average hit .463 in their last at-bat.
• Video of 24 different English accents. He's really good. Contains profanity, but it's funny.
• An excellent New Yorker essay on the origins of the modern conservative nuttiness.
• For people like NPR-guy-turned-Fox-stooge Juan Williams: Muslims Wearing Things.

Finally, an awesome Atlantic piece about a meta-researcher who's busy proving the failures of modern medical research. It's of a piece with Michael Pollan's more specific discussion of nutritionism, since scientific food recommendations are driven by all this shockingly flawed research:

"Studies have gone back and forth on the cancer-preventing powers of vitamins A, D, and E; on the heart-health benefits of eating fat and carbs; and even on the question of whether being overweight is more likely to extend or shorten your life. How should we choose among these dueling, high-profile nutritional findings? Ioannidis suggests a simple approach: ignore them all."

Or, put another way: "one large randomized controlled trial even proved that secret prayer by unknown parties can save the lives of heart-surgery patients, while another proved that secret prayer can harm them."

And people think the way I choose what to eat is weird. (It is--the only thing weirder than the system itself is that it works.)

aspects of comprehension

Today's English sentences I'm glad my students can't understand:

"Jesus Christ, stand up, you lazy bastards." (1-G)

"Holy crap, you guys are assholes." (1-A)

Don't get me wrong, both classes have been far worse. The rough-housing from 1-A is easier to deal with than more disruptive stuff.

I do get surprised. Students have varying levels of ability and comprehension, but I have to teach to the beginner level, because even the ones with better comprehension can't say much. In a more functional system, there would be assessment tests and students would be sorted out by level, but Chile's not there yet.

Gisselle rattled off something in Spanish for me, and I said, "Mas lento [slower]. If I say something long and fast in English, you're never going to understand it, are you?" And of course she got the wide-eyed complete-confused look that I had after her Spanish.

Suddenly the girl next to her, Jennifer, leans over and translates.

"Wait, you speak English?!"

"Mas o menos." More or less.

"No wonder you're always bored."

"Que?" What?

We chatted after class, and apparently her mother has always spoken to her in English and Italian. "No wonder" was beyond her and she wasn't inclined to demonstrate her speaking, but her understanding is obviously pretty solid, especially for Chile.

Who knows what else my kids know? And I'll never find out.

it's nice to have an impact

A trio of the friendliest girls from 1-C (which is saying a lot) caught up to me in the hallway today. Javiera started peppering me with questions.

"Teacher, you're leaving in seven weeks?"
"Well, in seven weeks I finish teaching. Then I leave Chile three weeks after that."

"And you're not coming back?"
"Nope, it's time for me to go home."

Javiera switched to English. "I miss you. I am sad."

"Aw, thanks. And hey, good English!"
"Yes!"

Daaawwww.

talking to the English Department

I stuck around for the English Department meeting this afternoon--recall that Jorge asked me to tell them what I told the Valparaiso English Network teachers. Here's what was different this time:

1. Mara, the head of the department (who is often very pushy, but very nice), said, "Remember how we talked about grouping students by their English level?". A fine idea, one I agree with, but no, I'm pretty sure we never talked about that.
2. "We want you to talk to the school's head of curriculum about that. We've told her, but she doesn't believe us."

Allrighty, then.

The curriculum director was very nice and very patient with my Spanish. I described how I learned Spanish, starting with basic usage and only much later learning about the grammar behind what I'd learned. For example, the teacher started by saying "Levántense!" and making a motion to stand up. So we knew that meant "Stand up!". Likewise, "Abran los libros" was obviously "Open your books." I think 3 years later I learned that those were the command form of those verbs. In the meantime, it wasn't important.

My favorite trick for these conversations is to show someone the first page of the Ministry of Education's English book, then the first page of English In Action. In her case, she doesn't speak English, so she understood how the Ministry book looks like an impenetrable tangle of text. I also said that even if you read English, the material makes no sense, and that especially impressed her when the English teachers nodded in agreement. She also wanted to photocopy English In Action, so hopefully in designing the system for next year, they'll track kids by level, and then start actually teaching to their level.

I wonder about my role in all this...in any situation, there's a lot of value in moving from a theoretical discussion (that maybe you've been having for years) to having someone from the outside come in and say, "Well, here's what my experience has been..." and hearing my stories both about learning Spanish, and about the changes I've seen in my students, how they've been able to master and actually acquire some English in our time together.

Apparently my next use may be to help convince some of the department holdouts that the essence of English is using it to communicate, rather than just abstractly learning its grammar.

notes from today

I did have class with 1-A today, but only 4 kids came to school from 1-J: somehow, along with 1-G, they thought the teacher protest was today instead of next Thursday (which is also what I thought, until two days ago), so only a handful of kids came in from those classes. The poor kids who did show up had to stay the entire day, with no classes. I stayed in the room with them as a favor to Marcela, because, hey, why not, she has at least 40 classroom hours per week, and I had no plans for the afternoon, and I just started reading Siddhartha for the first time.

We did have a nice moment in 1-A. Adding to our dialogue questions, we practiced

1. What do you do for fun?

2. I like _____.

and they fill in the blank with a short list of hobbies we learned: things like tennis, soccer, video games. After some practice, I had them get up in pairs and do it from memory.

Kevin: What do you do for fun?

Ignacio: I like you.

Which was pretty awesome, not just because of their insinuations that someone else is gay--I don't know if Ignacio was being sincere, or allowing himself to be part of mocking someone else, as I often do--but because it highlighted a growing flexibility in the students' use of language. For example, I also had them do the entire 4-question dialogue:

1. What's your name?

2. My name is ______.
1. Where are you from?
2. I am from ______.
1. How old are you?
2. I am _____ years old.
1. What do you do for fun?
2. I like _____.

That's how I intended them to do it. Here's what they did:

1. Where are you from?

2. I am from _____. And you?

Somewhere in their past, they learned to respond to "How are you?" with "I am fine. And you?". And now they have suddenly generalized "And you?" to other sentences! It feels like they're actually speaking English, putting things together in a way beyond what I've taught them.

cold, like snowboarding.

Whether it was because Anna was there or because Student X was missing, the little bastards in 1-B were fantastic today. Also, last time she was here they chanted "UN BESO! UN BESO!" and this time it was "ONE KISS! ONE KISS!". Not something I taught them, but hey, I'll take it.

They did call me out for lying to them last time about whether Anna was my girlfriend. I wish I knew how to say, in Spanish, "It's because I knew you little ******s would waste ten shouting minutes of class time on sexual innuendo and trying to get me to kiss her, just like you're doing now," but I had to settle for something simple and polite. Which they didn't listen to, because hey, it's just a teacher talking, it can't be that important.

Anna took some video, which I'll upload soon, and pointed out a lot of cool things about how much better I am at teaching and how much the kids have learned, and how much more comfortable they are when pronouncing English. As she put it, "They seem to understand that there are English sounds to make English words, instead of using Spanish sounds." On the videos I also get to see more of their reactions than I can when I'm teaching. Verdict: I'm pretty funny and they like my class.

We had a near-injury during a game of Slap. I put two chairs in the middle of the room, and one student from each team takes a turn. I say a word, and they run up and hit the picture on the board. While I am often awed by the destructive power of Chilean teenagers, today we had the smaller girl hit the larger girl with a full-on body check to keep her from reaching the board first. The larger girl bounced off the wall onto the floor, tripping the smaller girl so they both ended up in a laughing pile on the ground. We, uh, lost focus for a few minutes. (No major injuries. Smaller girl has a sore knee and a scrape on her leg.)

One of the words they learned was "snowboarding" (we did Hobbies), which I'd pointed out to them is a lot like "snowing," which we learned last time. At the end of class, with a mixed English-Spanish discussion about who Anna was, someone asked if we were in love. I translated and and Anna said, "No, I don't like you." I made my sad face.

(During the whole "ONE KISS!" nonsense, Anna had been talking to Juan next to her, who was pulling out everything he'd learned to have a conversation with her: "Where are you from?" "How old are you?". When I said Anna didn't like me, he alarmedly leaned over to her and said "False?". SO CUTE.)

Raquel, one of the girls who often Will Not Shut Up, but who likes English and is more willing to talk than most, said, "Teacher! You two...no sentimiento [warm feeling]...you, uh, cold! Like snowboarding."