Testing Language Use

I wish I knew better how well TOEFL scores are indicating preparedness for students entering my university. I simply don't know if those students who are admitted based on TOEFL scores feel or are judged as prepared for university study.

In order to better educate myself, I just went to look at sample TOEFL questions. Here is how the example reading passage supplied by ETS began: "The railroad was not the first institution to impose regularity on society."

ETS (TOEFL) is correct that this is standard English, but many native speakers may not be able to restate this sentence in their own words. Most Americans do not think of the railroad as an institution, and I can imagine that the concept of things such as railroad being institutions may not transfer well into other cultures. And because the railroad has such a fundamental place in American history, it might be difficult for students to conceptual the railroad in such as way.

Responding to Do You Speak American?

In this documentary, Johnstone mentions that people are attached to place even in today's globalized world, and that when people talk about language they are often talking about place.

I am in complete agreement with this statement. This is especially true when the listener does not immediate knowledge of the place associated with the language. For example, when students in our class have talked about their first or home languages, it conjures up images of people in a specific place, with specific values. But it also true to conversations between people who share a regional variety of English or an accent also use conversations about language to reaffirm their bond.

Just last night, I was trying to find a farming phrases such as "put to the grasses" that I could use in my presentation on code meshing. Because I live in a community in which farming is the dominate occupation, I was eager to learn more about the phrases those in my community might use with the understanding that knowing them will bring me closer to being part of the community at-large.

Who Own's Language

I think this movie was so powerful for most of us in the class because all of us who are here have faced similar questions and situations in our own lives. In fact, being in a PhD program has challenged my own identity in ways that I didn't quite expect. My colleagues are constantly remarking that I am using language with more confidence, but I know that this also reflects me becoming further distanced from those family members and friends that aren't as educated.

There were some fascinating statements made in video that I want to log here. I have included a one sentence reflection for each one.

Language is “a method by which we do things together."
Here language is tied to action and performance. As a definition, it both expands on how I would define language and it limits it.

Our first language as the language in which in “almost all meaningful things have happened.”

But so many meaningful things happen in one's other languages.

“The language to speak to a child is Pennsylvania Dutch.” It is not English.

I am reminded here of Heath's Ways with Words and how the language spoken to children and how children are spoken to conveys cultural values that aren't always expressed in adult conversation.

“No one owns language, but people are very possessive of it.”

I am enjoying the play with conflict in this statement.

“English was owned by the dictionary and by the teachers at school.” “Pennsylvania Dutch was owned by us.”

Did other people see the dictionary in the same way as a child? I certainly did. It was a magically book that could give you everything you needed to get by.

Who and What Can Threaten a Language?

In today's class, the topic of English threatening other languages was introduced. Sometimes I like to think through an issue by way of the various terms, concerns and questions that are imbedded in the debate. Here are the terms that immediately come to mind: loss, gain, personal identity, national identity, education, proficiency, competency, history, regionalism, values, and responsibility.

Who is responsible for the maintenance of a language? It seems that the people and communities have to be the primary holders of the responsibility, not the government or academicians. I think that individuals and communities are also the only agents that can ultimately kill-off a language. Historically, languages have been kept alive (though perhaps on0life support) in the face of government attempts to silence the language. They have been t alive through the people. Certainly, the inverse is also true that language grows out of the people. Allegiences to language and allegiances to other identity forming factors carry value (for example, language may represent someone's heritage while financial security may represent someone's committment to family), and the choice to let a language die is a choice of values.

Linguistic Human Rights?

One of the issues that stood out for me in the Bolton article came from his reference to Phillipson's work. According to Bolton, Phillipson "invokes the notion of 'linguistic human rights'" (73). While trying to define human rights--what constitutes a human right?--is fraught with difficulties, I found the idea of linguistic rights to be an under current in all the articles we read for today's class. When we ask whether or not language creates cultural identity or whether a language policy is just or right, we are essentially, defining individual's linguistic rights.

Historically, (I think) human rights have been defined as those rights that must remain intact above and beyond the good of the nation or political state in which a person resides. While I agree that the freedom of expression should be a human right as it is fundamental to our physical and mental health, is how we express ourselves--the language we choose and how we choose to use it, a necessary part of that right?

We often speak of linguistic choice as a human right as in when we talk about the loss of identity felt by someone who is barred from using the language of their choice. But when I still have a hard time equating the choice of language as a necessary component to the right of expression. That said, my positions on language policy, imposition of language and restrictions on language use would all say otherwise.

I know I have rambled a bit, but I am trying to figure out how the right to expression, the concept of human rights and the right to language choice intersect with each other.