Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

English as an International Language 107
Other and, implicitly for the Self’ (Palfreyman, 2005: 213–214). In EIL pedagogy
this discourse often positions English learners and bilingual teachers
as defi cient in comparison to native speakers. This discourse also idealizes
the so-called native speaker and negates the right of English speakers outside
Inner Circle countries to nativize the language for the local cultural
context. Finally, the Self–Other discourse has at times positioned certain
groups as incapable of participating in ‘modern’ methods of language
learning that typically involve group participation and ‘critical thinking’.
Often in discussions of the implementation of communicative language
teaching (CLT) in Outer and Expanding Circle countries, there is a suggestion
that the culture of learning in these countries is not conducive to CLT.
In the early 1990s, educators like Ballard and Clanchy (1991) began to
argue that different cultures have different attitudes regarding the nature
of knowledge and its function in society. They contend that there is a continuum
of attitudes toward knowledge ranging from what they term a
conserving attitude toward knowledge to an extending attitude toward
knowledge. In the case of the former, the learning approach is highly
reproductive and learning strategies involve memorization and imitation.
Activities often involve summarizing and applying formulae and information
in order to achieve correctness. On the other hand, as the continuum
moves to an extending attitude, the learning approach is analytic and
speculative, involving critical thinking and a search for new possibilities.
Activities entail questioning, judging, speculating and hypothesizing with
the aim of creativity and originality. Ballard and Clancy go on to argue
that although there are individual differences within a culture, a conserving
attitude toward knowledge is prevalent in many Asian societies.
. . . it remains true that the reproductive approach to learning, favoring
strategies of memorization and rote learning and positively discouraging
critical questioning of either the teacher or the text, is the
dominant tendency in formal education in much of Southeast Asia
and other Asian countries. And it is the case that in the Australian
system, even at the primary level, the dominant tendency is to urge
students toward an ultimately speculative approach to learning, to
encourage them to question, to search for new ways of looking at the
world around them. (Ballard & Clancy, 1991: 23)
Such Othering discourse regarding approaches to knowledge and
learning styles is evident in a good deal of the discourse surrounding the
implementation of CLT. Flowerdew (1998), for example, discusses the use
of group work and students’ oral participation, central components of
CLT, in reference to Chinese learners. She begins by asking,
Why is it that when one poses a question to a group of Arab students
the whole class is clamouring to answer, while a question addressed