Difficulties Engaging in Critical Dialog

The following eight posts are comprised of quotes from students in our Critical Pedagogies course this semester.  Each post expresses a concern or a problem with implementing a "critical" approach to English language teaching in a specific context.  We spent class this week discussing these "limit-situations" and trying to create "limit-acts" to confront these barriers.  In the comment section of each post you can read student responses to these problems.  They may not solve all our diffiulties but I think they can offer some great food for thought.

Relationships and Interests in the Classroom

what if the students had nothing to talk about the topic even in their native language.

"What do you think?" sounds like easy question but it's not to the person who may be given that question. It's still one of the uneasy questions to me. 

[HOW CAN WE CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE STUDENTS ARE INTERESTED IN THE TOPIC OF DISCUSSION, APPRECIATE THE KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR PEERS, AND WHERE ALL MEMBERS FEEL COMFORTABLE AND CONFIDENT ENGAGING WITH DIFFICULT QUESTIONS?] 

Cultures of Learning

My students haven't had experience giving presentations in front of other students.  Therefore, I have to explain them how to prepare their presentation, each student’s role, and how to present in class.

They don't even know how to find information they should bring to class.  So I have to show how they can search in English using English searching engines, newspapers or magazine. Second, even though they bring a lot of ideas, they have difficulties to express their ideas in English. Therefore, I have to correct them every time they make a mistake and I have to give correct words or expressions in my speaking class.

[HOW CAN TEACHERS SUPPORT SOME OF THE MORE BASIC SKILLS REQUIRED OF STUDENTS IN A PRESENTATION-BASED OR DISCUSSION BASED CLASSROOM?]

Students need 'the Basics'

I think teaching in elementary school is designed to give students the 'basics' through drills and useful expressions.  

The purpose of many English classes is to help students enter college. 

[WHAT CAN TEACHERS DO WHEN THEIR CURRICULUM IS CLEARLY DESIGNED NOT TO INVOKE CRITICAL DISCUSSION OR COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY?]

Scripted Curriculum

I'm supposed to follow the textbook and trying not to miss anything in the textbook. When I miss some in the textbook, I feel sorry for the student and failing responsibility. It is not the class designed  by my will but accepted through the rule which the publisher think the best. It doesn't include my students' own concept.

Our text book had sixteen chapters for me to teach in a year. That means I had to finish teaching two chapters in a month since our national curriculum required us to do it.

[IN CLASSROOMS WHERE TEACHERS ARE EXPECTED TO TEACH THEIR LESSONS FOLLOWING A PREDETERMINED TEXTBOOK, HOW CAN TEACHERS PROVOKE CREATIVE OR CRITICAL EXPERIENCES?]

Busy with Duties Outside of Class

Sometimes I had a hard time caused by far too many miscellaneous affairs than concentrate on preparing for classes.

[TEACHERS ARE OFTEN VERY BUSY WITH DUTIES THAT GO BEYOND CLASSROOM PLANNING AND TEACHING.  HOW CAN BUSY TEACHERS PREPARE FOR CRITICALLY ORIENTED LESSONS IN WAYS THAT WON'T TAKE TOO MUCH TIME FROM THEIR ALREADY BUSY SCHEDULES?]

Personal apprehension in Changing Teaching Practices

I guess, if I am being honest with myself, the biggest barrier is my own apprehension.  There is a lot of unfamiliar work involved in changing the way a class operates, how participants interact with each other, the individual expectations for the class, and using critical discussion to develop language abilities.  If I attempt this, what should I expect as a result?

[CHANGING ONE'S APPROACH TO TEACHING IS BOTH DIFFICULT AND INTIMIDATING.  HOW CAN TEACHERS DEVELOP A 'CRITICAL' APPROACH TO THEIR CLASSES WITHOUT

"Low Level" Students

It doesn't seem that Shin & Crookes approach would be possible for low level students who need the basics before they can speak critically and dialogically.  It seems that they excluded low level students.  

Having critical dialogue with the students who can't answer right away to "How's it going?" is too much for them.

[WHAT CAN TEACHERS DO TO ENGAGE WITH STUDENTS WHO ARE NOT PROFICIENT IN THE TARGET LANGAUGE?] 

Mixed Level Classes

Most of my classes are of mixed English proficiency, and there is a large discrepancy in focus and ability which means I can spend a lot of time assisting lower level students who may otherwise get distracted.

I'm co-teaching with a native English speaking teacher. We're teaching students in Grade 5, and 6 mainly focusing on listening, and speaking skills. We have about 30 students of varying proficiency in English in one class.

The questions then becomes, who will you concentrate on, the higher level students, then the middle and lower level starts to feel English is too hard or impossible. Focus on the middle level, then the higher levels are bored, and lower level distracts the class, or the lower level, then the whole class sleeps.

[HOW CAN TEACHERS' WITH MIXED-LEVEL CLASSES USE A CRITICAL APPROACH TO THEIR TEACHING?  IN WHAT WAYS CAN VARYING LEVELS OF ENGLISH PROFICIENCY BE UTILIZED AND EVEN MADE AN ADVANTAGE IN CRITICALLY ORIENTED CLASSROOMS?]

Some Blogs I've Happened Upon Recently

Along with some of the blogs I've mentioned in the past (Esl etc /  Do Nothing Teaching / Throwing Back Tokens / Turkish EFL), I've come across a few in recent days that might be of interest.

ELT Rants, Reviews, and Reflections - An educator and teacher trainer based in Korea
The Other Things Matter - A Reflective Language Teacher Based in Japan

These offer a lot of reflections on ELT happenings and plenty of ideas for things we might cook up in the classroom.  Have a look and enjoy.

Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" is banned in Arizona

Yet another questionable move made in Arizona.  The classic education text "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" was banned by the Tucson School District.  According to an article at Daily Censored:

School authorities confiscated the books during class—boxed them up and hauled them off. As one student said, “We were in shock … It was very heartbreaking to see that happening in the middle of class.”

A fantastic blog called Musings on the Spacial Turn (in education) has some links that address this in more detail here so I don't see any need to go into a rant.  But the reasons expressed for banning this book were as follows:
“They should not teach the kids that they’re oppressed as America is a land of opportunity and we should not teach the kids that America is a downer and that they are oppressed..."

Here are a few ideas in this banned book:

Dialogic education seeks out "the humanization of all people... no longer oppressor and oppressed, but human in the process of achieving freedom."  


"Dialogue cannot exist in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people....  If I do not love the world - if I do not love life - if I do not love people - I cannot enter into dialogue."  


"The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach.  They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow."  


"Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence.  The means used are not important; to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change them into objects."  

Those who would consider these dangerous ideas are the one's we should be truly concerned about.

Student Blogs

These are blogs that students from our class are keeping.  Please have a look and comment on them when you feel moved to do so.  If your name and url are not listed here that means I either did not receive your blog address or I was unable to open your blog. 

Big cho:  http://bigcho7.blogspot.com/

Carla:  http://carla-xyz.blogspot.com/

Hyunjung:  http://heroine211.blogspot.com/

Brock:  http://spudnutz.blogspot.com/

David:  http://beinginprogress.blogspot.com/

Jumin:  http://juminjjang.blogspot.com/

Ben:  http://benchun-criticalpedagogies.blogspot.com/

Sarah:  http://sarahchoi-criticalpedagogies.blogspot.com/

Huggy:  http://huggyeom.blogspot.com/

Jinny:  http://jinny-criticalpedagogies.blogspot.com/

HR:  http://ancientfuture101.blogspot.com/

Hyunmi: http://uriadle1.blogspot.com/

Michelle: http://criticalmichelle.blogspot.com/

Jung, youngmoon:  http://youngmoonjj.blogspot.com/

kyurankim:  http://kirra-englishlearner.blogspot.com/

Hyungyeong:  http://hyungyeongcriticalpedagogies.blogspot.com/

Linguistic Landscapes

Check out this blog. 
It might be a nice little reading to reflect on when thinking about the editorial I handed out in class. "Linguistic Landscapes" offer a slightly different way to think about the public use of language.  In fact, I think it's worth mentioning that the link shows the beginnings of a nice little lesson plan.  The writer suggests having students take pictures of public displays of written language and other symbols, then bringing these pictures into class to look at as a group.  I think there are a lot of things a teacher could do with this kind of assignment.  Obviously correcting grammar would be one fairly shallow task.  Another could entail rewriting messages that would be intended for different audiences.  Still another could involve a brief analysis of different messages and short discussions related to the four "critical" questions that we discussed in class last week. 
Just a refresher: 
1)  Who is speaking? 
2)  For whom is the message intended?  How do you know?
3)  Who is being spoken about? 
4)  What is the basis of this person's knowledge?  Based on what authority is this speaker's voice 'powerful'?  What words, symbols, etc suggest that this message or this speaker are valuable? 

It may take a little work on the part of the teacher to adapt these questions for advertising, graffiti, political slogans, and other artifacts in the Linguistic Landscape.  It would also take a little work adapting this to various students, at different ages, and levels of English proficiency.  But I think there are some really creative activities that could come out of this.  I'm going to try it with university students this week and see what comes of it.

A nice little article to compliment our editorial

This is a nice little article that might add something to our discussion over the "Korea's Proofreading Woes" editorial. Have a look if you're interested.

Local English Teaching Magazine Falls into its own "Practical" Trap

The newest issue of "The English Connection" (TEC magazine) included a short editorial that I have some serious issues with. I sent my response to the editor, but unsurprisingly he has shown no interest in publishing it. This wasn't really my goal in writing it. If it was I would have waited until I was a little less emotional about this. But I think TEC magazine, in all of its virtues as a practitioner-oriented publication, overstepped its self imposed limitations and as a result has embarrassed itself and its readers. Anyway, you can read my full response below. I know I'm leaving myself open here, as this is quite an emotional response, but hey, what good is intellectual debate without a little fire?


---------------
Response to Elliot Patton's “Korea's Proofreading Woes”
by Curtis Porter

I would like to offer my humble response to the editorial by Elliot Patton in the Spring 2012 edition of The English Connection. In this short piece, the writer shares a story about a coffee shop he visited with his young son. He describes his feelings about a grammatical irregularity in the graphics painted on a second story wall, and he uses this as a springboard into an indictment of the use of Konglish in public spaces in Korea. The writer seems appalled by the inability of Koreans to use English in ways he deems satisfactory. After expressing how embarrassed Korean people should feel for such uses of English, he concludes with an open ended question about how teachers might best approach the “cleaning up of Konglish.” His goal seems to have been little more than to offer a crude reminder that we need to work harder to eradicate what he feels to be a contaminated variety of English. Mr. Patton gives the reader a straight-forward and practical question. Unfortunately he assumes that the problems that underlie his question are equally straight-forward. They are not.
Mr. Patton's unexamined convictions read like a caricature of viewpoints that were contested long ago in more intellectually rigorous media. He does little more than perpetuate half-dead myths that the larger field of English education has been slowly overcoming for many years. It has been over a decade since Vivian Cook (1999) systematically dismantled common-sense notions of native speakers and native Englishes. In the same year, Canagarajah (1999) provided a frame for ways international English teachers might develop a politically salient approach to their work. It has been almost thirty years since Kachru (1985) incited a larger debate in the rapidly growing field of World Englishes. Mr. Patton offers us nothing new or interesting in regard to these spheres of academic thought. He willingly admits that “many factors can potentially be blamed for this [persistence of Konglish]...” but finally concedes that “it is not my place to delve into speculation.” In other words, he wishes to gloss over the why in pursuit of the how.
More interesting than Mr. Patton's beliefs is the question of what they are doing in a professional publication. What value did the editors of TEC see in his work and what did they wish to accomplish by publishing it? Given the editors' call for responses, one might guess they were trying to provoke discussion on a potentially contentious topic. Yet the reader is given no hint as to what the topic of discussion is meant to be. Is this a linguistic issue? A social or cultural issue? An educational issue? As any teacher will agree, an important key to facilitating a productive debate is to introduce relevant parameters. This can be done by giving example arguments, presenting opposing perspectives, posing pointed questions, and so on. Yet given the lack of any direction on how to engage with these ideas, the reader is left to assume the editors are presenting this as the intellectual position of the magazine (which, in the rather arrogant words of the writer, involves a “policing of incorrect English”). If this is not the case, then the only other reasonable conclusion seems to be that they have published these ideas in order to invoke issues that they are not prepared or willing to deal with in an adequately intellectual manner. This brings the larger mission of TEC into question.
If Mr. Patton is correct in suggesting that TEC writers would do well to overlook the messier and more complex why questions in the pursuit of more concrete and efficient how questions, then the publication of his work speaks to a much larger danger in the professional model that the editors of TEC have adopted. The magazine is obviously written by and for practitioners and thus places great value on practical and experiential knowledge. There are obvious advantages to this approach. It is ideal if one wishes to swap teaching tips and personal experiences. Developing a space for teachers to share ideas without relying on highbrow academic conventions is both exciting and promising, and there are numerous high-quality practitioner oriented journals that have taken this approach. Yet if TEC seeks to build a practical and collaborative knowledge base in Korean ELT, it is important to recognize the limitations of doing so.
Put simply, there are finer points to teaching that cannot be adequately explored in 500 to 1000 word mini-essays. This is not a problem as long as you leave complex topics like those invoked in Mr. Patton's editorial to more progressive and academic minded publications. The decision to publish his piece in this setting, however, requires more creative and responsible editorial work. If you wish to begin touching on sociolinguistic and cultural aspects of English education in Korea in a less than intellectually rigorous format, then you must do so in ways that creatively and thoughtfully implement various perspectives, and you must do so in ways that encourage substantive debate. The short exchange between Deubelbeiss and Griffin later in this same issue is a fabulous example of how you might achieve such a goal.
As published, Mr. Patton's antiquated beliefs on important sociolinguistic and cultural issues seem to have no intellectual merit, and even the practical worth of his editorial is questionable. TEC's failure to responsibly engage with the issues between the lines of his piece exposes a danger of giving credibility to an opinion that is blatantly out of date and uninformed. It also begs an important question: upon what authority should this 'practical' approach to ELT knowledge be built? Creating a platform for the voices of teachers in the trenches is a noble goal, but must it mean that we are subject to the rants of every ex-backpacker who has managed to break into the business of ELT publishing?
I am in no way suggesting that the views expressed in the editorial should be censored or overlooked. Even ideas as short-sighted as Mr. Patton's prove useful from time to time. I simply take issue with the careless way his unexamined beliefs were promoted by your magazine. Clearly, it is not necessary to publish long winded academic articles in order to address contentious issues in Korean English education. But your decision to offer such an abbreviated treatment of them means that you have a responsibility to include a variety of intellectual perspectives (you might approach an informed Korean educator or a qualified professional in the fields of linguistics, sociolinguistics, or cultural studies). The editorial staff blatantly dropped the ball on this one. The decision to publish Mr. Patton's piece, at best, reveals consequences of taking an overtly anti-academic approach to English language education, and at worst, suggests the potential of TEC to do for education what Lonely Planet has done for cross-cultural understanding.



Canagarajah, A.S. (1999). Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cook, V. (1999). Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 33(2). pp. 185 – 209.

Kachru, B.B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk and H. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures (pp. 11-36). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Welcome to Spring 2012 Critical Pedagogies

This blog will be my running record of our Critical Pedagogies class this semester. I will be posting materials, reflections, potential lesson plan ideas, links, video clips, and/or whatever else seems relevant or partially relevant. My hope is that this course takes all of us in new directions as teachers- myself included. This blog will be a partial record of what I learn and think about this semester as an instructor and hopefully it will serve as a resource and a reflective tool for all class participants.
Please feel free to comment on any of my posts, past or present. There are many posts from last year's class that contain links to helpful websites, resources, and various articles that might be interest in this course and in your own teaching practices.
I'm looking forward to working with you all.

Curt