In this article, Sandra McKay and Sau-Ling Wong argue for a revision of code-based and individual learner-based views of second-language learning. Their position is based on a two-year qualitative study of adolescent Chinese-immigrant students conducted in California in the early 1990s, in which the authors and their research associates followed four Mandarin-speaking students through seventh and eighth grades, periodically interviewing them and assessing their English-language development. In discussing their findings, McKay and Wong establish a contextualist perspective that foregrounds interrelations of discourse and power in the learner's social environment. The authors identify mutually interacting multiple discourses to which the students were subjected, but of which they were also subjects, and trace the students' negotiations of dynamic, sometimes contradictory, multiple identities. Adopting B. N. Peirce's concept of investment, McKay and Wong relate these discourses and identities to the students' exercise of agency in terms of their positioning in relations of power in both the school and U.S. society.
This paper is a critical review of selected research on the learning of English by Chinese speakers, in particular, on the difficulties they experience and the variables determining the success of their under taking. Areas of consensus and dispute among researchers, as well as suggestions for needed research, will be pointed out. Emphasis is on analyzing approaches and noting trends. The premise of the paper is that, to whatever extent (as justified by empirical evidence) Chinese speakers may be said to share a common language and culture, such a survey would be helpful to the formulation of lines of inquiry and the development of learner-language-specific methods and materials. Studies of social/affective factors in English acquisition (which are locale-specific) will not be discussed. Topics covered include phono logy, morphology and syntax (and beyond), the typological transfer hypothesis, analysis of written discourse, analysis of spoken discourse and sociocultural competence, and reading.
LANGUAGE TEACHING IS A COMPLEX ACtivity with multiple dimensions: intellectual, social, and political. As a profession, we have evinced a keen interest in the intellectual dimension of our work: in how language teaching is affected by existing paradigms in psychology or linguistics (see Raimes for example). In contrast, we have demonstrated weaker interest in the social and political dimensions of our work. Yet it is clear that social and political attitudes and processes profoundly affect our professional activities in the domestic arena, through, for example, the funding of language programs, state and federal mandates for teacher training and certification, curriculum requirements and community support. As Judd (13) notes, whatever our conscious ideological preferences as individuals, simply by teaching languages, we are "directly or indirectly implementing a stated or implied language policy as well as actively promoting a form of language change in our students. . . . (W)e are involved in a political process."Historically, the field of language teaching (including the teaching of English as a second language) has received the most social and political attention during nativist times-those periods in which the established native-Englishspeaking segment of the American population, for various domestic and international reasons, perceives relative newcomers to the land as posing a threat to its interests as well as to the entire nation's political unity and spiritual health. During such periods political leaders (often scantily informed about the profession) seek most actively to direct language teaching. Today, as evident from the visibility of the The Modern Language Journal, 72, iv (1988) O1988 The Modern Language Journal 0026-7902/88/0004/379 $1.50/0English-only movement, we are again in a nativist era when social and political attention is focused on language teaching policies.We would like to consider to what extent the profession has been conscious of the social and political forces influencing language teaching, and to what extent it has sought to respond to and direct political policies toward language teaching. In a sense, this paper is an attempt to explore some of the questions raised in Judd's excellent recent review of the English Language Amendment (ELA). To this end, we attempt to determine the trends and emphases over the last fourteen years within the field of language teaching by analyzing the content of the TESOL Quarterly (published by Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages), The Modern Language Journal (published by the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations), and Foreign Language Annals (published by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages).The first section of the paper outlines a historical context for understanding the current English-only movement and its nativist ideology and provides a brief discussion of how this movement bears on language teaching. The remainder presents the results of our journal content analyses and their impli...
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