"TESOL at 40" by Canagarajah

 "Crucial to this shift is the exploration of the way one subject position interacts with others in students' language practices.  So researchers are exploring how identities like gender, race, ethnicity, or one's immigrant and 'nonnative' status impact language learning."


Focusing on different aspects of one's identity is highly crucial in learning a language.  Many times, teachers or researchers focus on one aspect of one's identity; whether they are non-nnative or native speakers is one that particularly comes to mind.  Because everyone is so different, there is no way to put a generalization on all non-native or native speakers.  Many studies in the past have only focused on those particular characteristics and have failed to mention whether participants were male or female, Japanese or Russian.  Because of this, their data tends to be very one-sided and highly biased.  By having teachers and researchers be more aware of the different sides that makes up one's identity, they will better be understand how a Colombian female may learn a language differently than a German speaking male.  They will no longer have to categorize them in the same group.


In the classroom, teachers will be able to better gauge where each student learning a second language is at if they take into consideration the different aspects of their students' identities.  Instead of making a blanket statement, they will be able to better assess which student may need more help than another if they were to focus on each individual rather than focusing on them as an entire group.  Students will also be able to feel more comfortable with the language being learned if they know their teachers are paying individual attention to their needs.

Saville-Troike Chapter 6

"While speakers of these languages (French, Spanish and Italian) face a simpler task in acquiring this aspect of English, they conversely must learn when not to use the definite article:

I always enjoy the rap music."

I think this rings true for speakers of Romance languages and for other languages as well.  My parents, being born and raised in Korea and then moving to the US, tend to use the definite article when not needed.  When practicing her English, my mom will sometimes say things like, "there's the food on the table."  Although it is not needed, she tends to slip in definite articles throughout her speaking.  Another aspect of English that is difficult for Korean speakers is the fact that English contains the indefinite articles a/an.  In Korean, there are no indefinite articles and so for someone who is a native Korean speaker to learn English and then to acquire the use of English articles, is definitely a struggle.  For those learning to speak English, I find that they have the most trouble with the "simpler" things, such as when to use the/a/an or how to switch from the past to the present tense.  By having them practice speaking as well as writing, English L2 learners will be able to better understand the usage of the different types of articles and tenses in English.  However, if we were just to have them only write, only read or only speak, they would not be able to fully grasp the different grammatical concepts of English.