Casanave Ch 4 for 2/6
1. After reading some of the arguments in this chapter… do you believe there is something called a native English standard that should be practiced in the L2 writing class? Where does this standard come from? Should this be applied to all writing that students do or to certain tasks and genres?
In my marriage, my husband is the optimist, and I am the realist (although he would say he’s the realist and I’m a pessimist). Therefore, my beliefs likely align more closely with the “accommodationist” viewpoint mentioned in the chapter (Casanave p.105). While I recognize the merit in the theory behind idealism, I am much more likely to focus on what students primarily need and the best way to make that available to them in the time I’ve been allotted. For ESL Grammar students at the U of I, the purpose of the semester is to develop a more native-like grasp on the grammatical structures of English so as to improve their writing in other upper-level classes at the university. Were there sufficient time, I certainly think it would be worthwhile to talk about the differences in “non-standard” varieties of English and allow writers to make choices for themselves, but as it stands I hardly have time to talk about use of grammatical rules outside the genre of academic writing. For example, I (begrudgingly) teach not to start a sentence with a conjunction during the semester and then only mention in passing not to worry about this rule outside of the academic world. If there is hardly time to mention the use of grammatical rules across genres during the semester, then there is no time to mention the use of different varieties of English across genres. I think Casanave makes other various legitimate points about the validity yet impracticality of this idealist view, including that some stability in the language must be assumed in order to be taught and that learners often prefer to learn “standard” English. While this is the viewpoint I align with more, I’m interested to read some of the work from Canagarajah and reevaluate.
In my marriage, my husband is the optimist, and I am the realist (although he would say he’s the realist and I’m a pessimist). Therefore, my beliefs likely align more closely with the “accommodationist” viewpoint mentioned in the chapter (Casanave p.105). While I recognize the merit in the theory behind idealism, I am much more likely to focus on what students primarily need and the best way to make that available to them in the time I’ve been allotted. For ESL Grammar students at the U of I, the purpose of the semester is to develop a more native-like grasp on the grammatical structures of English so as to improve their writing in other upper-level classes at the university. Were there sufficient time, I certainly think it would be worthwhile to talk about the differences in “non-standard” varieties of English and allow writers to make choices for themselves, but as it stands I hardly have time to talk about use of grammatical rules outside the genre of academic writing. For example, I (begrudgingly) teach not to start a sentence with a conjunction during the semester and then only mention in passing not to worry about this rule outside of the academic world. If there is hardly time to mention the use of grammatical rules across genres during the semester, then there is no time to mention the use of different varieties of English across genres. I think Casanave makes other various legitimate points about the validity yet impracticality of this idealist view, including that some stability in the language must be assumed in order to be taught and that learners often prefer to learn “standard” English. While this is the viewpoint I align with more, I’m interested to read some of the work from Canagarajah and reevaluate.
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