Week 12- Eng. in the era of globalization

There were many quotes that I found impressionable in this chapter of the book but for starters in the very first paragraph, the author states “the spread of English proceeds in a manner that supports the integrity and devotion of other languages”.  This quote really stood out to me because after reading some of the past articles about how everyone learning English could be harmful or degrading to some languages, it was nice to hear a good word about our language.  But continuing with the reading it discusses the Pennycook’s different perspectives of homogeny and heterogeny.  This portion was really interesting to me because I had never heard these terms before and I thought taking a look at his ideas was really eye opening.  After analyzing his opinions I think it shows that there is a definite imbalance between these two ideas and it makes me question how we would ever be able to attain any type of harmony.  Pennycook stated that he thinks that the ultimate effect of these two ideas is a fluid mixture of cultural heritage which I suppose is somewhat the step in the right direction.

Another idea I pulled from this week’s reading that was thought provoking was that English has been related to power even since the colonial times.  After thinking more deeply on this it makes complete sense but when I think of English as power I would relate it to current times because people around the world are learning the language since our country has become such a power figure.  When in reality, in colonial times our country was being taken over by the British power who spoke English so our primary thoughts were to correlate English with power because the settlers from Spain were over powered by their force.  The author later states, “knowing English is like possessing the fabled Aladdin’s lamp”, a very powerful statement which really sums up the viewpoint on the English language.

The chapter also mentions that there are economic, educational and mass media pressures or incentives to learning English which could all be very overwhelming to learners of the language.  I think that as teachers it is important to have all of these aspects in mind when instructing learners from other countries because along with the stresses of understanding a very complicated language, they also have all the pressures from these concepts that push them to want to have an understanding even more.  I know that when I was in Spain I felt almost overwhelmed with all of the slang and expressions that I was never taught but needed in order to effectively communicate with other peers my age that it made it stressful to learn a language that I thought I already had a good base on.

Through studies in my linguistics course we learned about how many languages that are found throughout the world and I really never understood just how many are out there until studying this subject more.  We also discussed how real it is about all of the languages that are disappearing which I think the widespread obsession of learning English definitely has impacted.  It saddens me to think of how many people are losing their native tongue but on the flip side it is also important that we are able to communicate worldwide so there is definitely a positive and negative side to this issue.