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Limited English proficiency's invasion into the public school system has overflowed into upper level education and fueled interest in multicultural communication. Communicative competency, however, is much more than knowing words. Society mistakenly thinks if we can do something ourselves, we can teach that something to someone else: thus, if we can speak the language, we can teach the language. As Johann Wolfgang Van Goethe put it, "Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks he can talk about language." Teaching or gaining language fluency is not that simple because language fluency is only part of communicative competency.
An awareness of public attitudes toward people from other cultures, knowing why these attitudes are multicultural mistakes, and understanding how to address them should help foster better future relations whether teaching students or forming friendships in the community.
MISTAKE #1: "If they live in our country they should speak our language," or "If they come here to study, they should have good enough English to study like anyone else."
COMMENT: Listening, speaking, reading and writing are separate components of the language process. Newcomers are exposed to listening through T.V. and reading through road signs, grocery stores, and printed material, but must build bridges to native speakers to practice the putting together of meaning with words that flow into appropriate sentences. Many foreign students study English intensively in classrooms but have no native speaker with whom to practice the flow of sentence construction. Japanese students, for example, start English in second grade and gain tremendous vocabularies, but never speak English openly. Since newcomers may lack contact with English speakers, or be insecure in approaching others because their own culture labels this practice rude, the actual speaking of the language is retarded. Young children achieve with little intimidation through submersion forced upon them on playgrounds, but adults at home do not have this opportunity. They fall behind their children in the skill of speaking and will revert to the native language rather than look foolish in their children's eyes. Improper attempts at speaking outside the family often lead to isolation or embarrassment.
Culture plays tricks on newcomers even when they know the literal meanings of words. Going to a baby shower to one newly arrived foreigner meant the next door native neighbor needed help giving the new baby a bath, so she attended the event with soap, towels, and embarrassment. Being successful in a new language combines Language Learning (recognition of the spoken word or being able to attach some meaning to the written from) and Language Acquisition (constructing the words into oral or written sentences). It helps to think of this as a receiver and a giver. A correlation exists between learning and acquisition, but the correlation is unreliable because it is affected by the individual personality and idiosyncrasies of both old and new cultures. At present, TOEFL testing has no successful speaking component. Rater reliability has prevented success with The Test of Spoken English (TSE), and expense had prevented the success of SPEAK.
SOLUTION: Since measuring ability (accurate diagnosis) changes expectations, incorporating competency diagnosis before remediation softens expectations to a more realistic setting. Just as core competencies govern in the normal classroom, core competencies should be established for multicultural students. Where do you find core competencies identified? Experience has shown them more readily available through the adult education programs than any other source. One such program that based the competencies on function instead of skills comes from the network of Washington State, and is referred to as ABLE (Adult Basic and Literacy Educators). This program not only gives measurable objectives, but gives suggestions as to materials that can be used to develop them. This program, distributed through Seattle Central Community College, is a good model for success. Curriculum based on core competencies of function within the speaking component greatly enhances multicultural teaching because language skills have the culture incorporated within them.
MISTAKE #2: "LEP students are hard because they just tune out. They seldom look you in the eye, and either won't take the responsibility for things that happen, or they simply won't participate in a discussion, no matter what it's about. I don't think they know half of what's going on around them."
COMMENT: An acculturation process takes place when entering a new culture. Cultural shock follows the honeymoon stage, and a leveling off or adjustment period precedes cultural acceptance. The federal government's Title I-Migrant program allocates six years of funding support for this maturity. The native culture of the student blended with acculturation affects language mastery and may be responsible for the indifferent attitude the student sometimes projects. Examples vary:
1) An Asian culture projects it as bad manners to come forth with one's own strong opinions. In Japan, for example, there are fifteen ways to allude to "no" without ever saying it. According to this culture, it is more polite to let the party involved believe something that is untrue than to speak frankly. The far east carries a tacet reverence first to God or supernatural being, followed by Heaven, Land, King or government, Parent, and Teacher. Contrast this with a culture that favors doctors and engineers on the pay scale. In these traditional cultures, the teacher takes the responsibility for the learning of the student, and the student is never to contradict the teacher. The eyes are never supposed to meet with the teacher, for to show respect is to look down. This is a vivid contrast from the American system where the student is expected to come forth with opinions, and looking away from the teacher is viewed as disinterest.
2) The Hispanic culture has a factor of a different nature. The Spanish language itself contains reflexive verbs that pass meanings in a way that English speakers are unaccustomed. I was alarmed at first when my students told me their homework didn't do itself, and the bus didn't stop itself to get them to school. I was quick to inform them it was their responsibility to do their homework and their responsibility to get themselves on the bus-not the bus's responsibility to pick them up. Later as I studied Spanish, I realized it is the structure of the reflexive verb that makes a Hispanic sound irresponsible to an English speaker. I had to teach Hispanic students the cultural expectations while teaching sentence structure in the English Language because English contains so few reflexive verbs.
3) The Native American culture stresses that a tribal member should not rise above the brother, so if the brother does not know the answer, the member should not give the answer either. A tribal member individually putting a problem on the board is demonstrating disloyalty to the tribe. Teacher expectation of individual answers in a classroom requests a rejection of tribal values, so teachers in these cultures have to learn to plan activities that involve everyone at the same time.
SOLUTION: It is a unique and interesting fact that the acculturation process, the learning of the first language, the learning of the second language, the selection of materials to use when teaching in these stages, and the testing of the stages all fall into the groupings set up by Bloom's Taxonomy: repetition, comparison, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Regardless of cultural background, charting parallels with this taxonomy is a remarkably reliable aid to multicultural teaching. Such a chart enables rapid assessment and appropriate curriculum choice. Additionally, teaching students both the stages of acculturation and the differences in expectations between the old and new culture lends to success.
MISTAKE #3: "I just hate these 'macho-oriented' foreigners trying to impose their language on America. Current students seem to be less motivated to learn English and fit into society than past immigrants. Why can't they remember that English is the language of this country, and they are supposed to fit into the society that is here."
COMMENT: As late as 1987, two-thirds of the Americans who responded to a national survey believed that English was the official language of the United States. The truth is that the Constitution is silent on the issue. Since Senator S.E. Hiwayaka first proposed an English Language Amendment in Congress in 1981, official English measures have been considered in nearly every state, but to date there is NO legislated official language of the United States, and the opponents of this legislation charge that such an amendment would threaten civil rights in a "cloak of patriotism". The national attitude is that if a national language were not important enough to the founding fathers to include in the constitution, it shouldn't be included now. While the present leading second language in the United States is Spanish, the leading second language in our early history was German. During World War II, German-Americans took a low profile. Many changed last names to demonstrate loyalty in spite of the rich cultural heritage they brought into the United States.
In recent figures, the United States Census Bureau reported over 31 million people in the US speaking a language other than English at home. The 1991 Intermountain TESOL conference reported that Utah's Davis district had 51 languages in 3200 students. The State of Idaho in the 1990 publication News and Reports identified 30 home languages other than English, 2400 LEP students enrolled in its public school systems, and a rising rate of immigrants from southeast Asia. In spite of huge numbers of other language speakers throughout the United States, the census claims that only 11% of the speakers are "regular" speakers of another tongue.
The high percentage of English language USED indicates language itself may not be as big a problem as accepting cultural differences. These figures suggest that since English is the language USED even while other languages are in the homes and prevalent in ethnic groups, stereotyping is the actual villain. The clinging to first culture ways and imposing them onto others even when English is the language USED offends those not of that ethnic group. A minority imposing on a majority has always been explosive.
SOLUTION: Teachers can help students recognize that there are stages of ethnicity. Being captured in the first culture, ethnic encapsulation, can change into ethnocentrism (gaining respect for culture two) depending on the exposure of the newcomer. Discussing ethnicity with our multicultural students helps move them beyond ethnic encapsulation. Becoming acquainted with all the stages of ethnicity helps individuals realize that all members of a culture do not respond the same in the new culture and, therefore, cannot be stereotyped as our ignorance would have us do. A fact/opinion approach needs to be used when discussing ethnocentrism.
MISTAKE #4: "Foreigners aren't interested in improving their speech. They live in a society where radio and television are everywhere, hear the language spoken every day, participate in conversations, and still carry the same accent they had when they first learned the language. They could care less about the quality of their speech."
COMMENT: Unlike European societies where speaking "properly" is the traditional value, the people in the United States do not correct each other's speech. Historically militant countries, such as France and Germany, take national language pride in contrast to Americans who carry "you are free to do your own thing" and "uniqueness is good" attitudes. Americans accept accents as a distinctive part of personality. Since correcting speech is not a part of our culture, the knowledge of how to correct is limited. Only musicians and drama directors are well studied in the elements of pitch, frequency, and how sound production manifests in human voice. Few English speakers know to teach that the tongue taps the alveolar ridge-not the back of the teeth-when producing the "t" sound or that the "d" sound is the identical mouth position but comes from the throat. Newcomers discover most of their speaking errors through humorous situations with American friends. They are surprised to learn that lack of sound discrimination is translating into their writing, and that the writing patterns vary from culture to culture as well as oral English patterns. While newcomers do desire to improve, they seldom seek formal training because they don't realize they need it. Most appreciate knowing how to improve when they realize they are making errors.
SOLUTION: Teachers need to become aware of writing forms of other cultures. They need to add supplement speech texts, communication texts, and writings describing the problems of foreign speakers to their personal libraries. They need to teach the international alphabet. The speech therapist in the school can supplement teachers in identifying elements in the production of the troublesome sounds and exercises for these sounds. Tape recorders should be used when identifying pronunciation problems, so student speech can be listened repetitively by the student. Often without teacher help the student can feel, but not identify, the error when repetition is imposed.
MISTAKE #5: "How can I help my student learn faster. Perhaps the student needs a teacher or tutor who speaks his native language in order to effectively teach English."
COMMENT: It seems to be a very popular, but erroneous, idea that all language is stored in one place in the brain. Research shows that nothing is stored in one center in the brain. Writing alone involves the vision located in the back, motor skills located at the top, and audio located on the sides. Modern microscopes reveal brain dendrite systems that connect these centers with a chemical electrical flow. Hospitals have discovered when tumors or injuries occur in the audio center of the temporal lobe, patients loose the complete first language but retain the second one. Research has shown that concepts are stored in yet another place, and that once the concept is learned, the individual does not remember in which language the concept was learned originally. Still more research has shown that the rate a student learns slows down when information is translated from one language into another. The United States diplomat training and leading language schools throughout the world teach totally by new language submersion. Foreign students claim English speaking level jumps dramatically when they abandon the Native Language/English dictionary in favor of the English only dictionary aided by a Thesaurus.
SOLUTION: Teachers should provide bridges to native speakers through oral homework assignments so new language speakers are forced to interact with native language and develop friendships in the new culture. Rate, double word meanings, idiomatic usages, and reduced forms are problems that can be helped by interaction with native speakers. Forcing the new speaker to formulate questions, react to answers, and interact with a native speaker helps the newcomer discover how things work in the new culture.
Gaining literal meanings are not enough. Levine and Aldeman's text Beyond Language states, "...to know another's language and not his culture is a very good way to make a fluent fool of one's self." Wisdom tells us to remember that dealing with public attitudes can be ticklish and controversial, so to keep a sense of humor. Beyond that, becoming adept at these few solutions reaps major rewards toward communicative competency.