Week 7

While reading the article The Cultures of English as a Lingua Franca  I thought of our first week of class when we tried to define culture on our own. The article depicted the definition of culture as: “Culture can be viewed as a discourse or discourse community which is dynamic, complex, and negotiated and one of many possible means of interpreting meaning and understanding in interactions that may or may not emerge as relevant” (Baker 573). I agree with the article’s definition because culture is a complex idea that is constantly changing and it can have various interpretations to different people. 

Culture can be problematic because not everyone has the same view or opinion on it. That brings me to my next point on how I believe it adds to bilingual education being controversial because it comes with change in the schools and in the community. Furthermore, in my opinion students who are linguistically diverse learn best when there is a community created within the classroom and there are interactive activities where the students can practice their language skills. I believe that a student should not let go of their home culture and traditions because then they let go of their identity as we previously learned. A student should never be denied to speak their native language; instead we should encourage them to preserve it because I know many Latino students who do not speak Spanish or the language that was spoken by their ancestors. It has been proven that skills attained in L1 transfer to students’ L2.

Moreover, I found it fascinating that in Marra’s article Recording and Analyzing Talk across Cultures they looked into language in the workplace. I had never thought about language in the workplace because I am always focusing on language in the classroom because of my major so I found it very interesting that the research was interested in exploring what people actually did when they talked together at work. The article stated that working with an ethnically different group inevitably introduces challenges and complexities to the research process. During the time where data is collected they record natural talk that takes place and they also use participant observation. The LWP team strives to ensure that “they gather information from a wide range of communication channels and each context within each workplace to provide a basis for a thorough description of the communication practices of workplace participants. Overall, I found this article interesting because it was something that I had never explored and it opened my eyes to different environments of language.