Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Introduction 9This BookThis book is an attempt to bring under one roof some importantmatters largely linguistic but also, inevitably, sociocultural that,I believe, should have greater exposure. It is not any sort of handbook or‘how-to’ manual. It does not outline specific activities or curriculumadaptations, and its coverage is not restricted to what might be seen asimmediately relevant in the classroom. It deals, rather, with backgroundinformation that could reasonably inform pedagogical activities andresearch. In short, this book does not tell teachers what to do in class, butit may provide some useful underpinnings. As implied above, goodcontextualization is central to the enhancement of cultural and linguisticsensitivities, but there is also a case to be made for some linguistic andsociolinguistic basics, as noted by Brumfit (2001). Some of theseobviously relate to ‘foreign’ languages, and some to nonstandarddialects. And, as Ferguson (2006: 174) reminds us, there is a thirdcategory. In a world in which English is becoming more and moreglobalized, but where its apparently permanent incursions are spawningsturdy local ‘Englishes’, teachers’ awareness of these could ‘replaceabsolutist conceptions of what is proper and correct in language withgreater flexibility and principled pragmatism regarding norms andmodels’. The teacher who has some awareness along these lines willsurely have a better understanding of language varieties that, althoughthey may exist as nonstandard in American or British classrooms,increasingly represent Englishes that are locally or regionally standardat their points of origin.Andersson and Trudgill (1990: 179) make the point, too: ‘teachers whoare prepared to take an open-minded, unprejudiced attitude towardsthe varieties of language spoken by their pupils will be the ones who alsosucceed best in fostering and developing children’s linguistic interestsand abilities’. We could expand this, in fact, and say that such teachersare likely to succeed best in developing all of their pupils’ potentials. Butthe observation also prompts us, of course, to consider how best wemight facilitate the development of open-mindedness among teachers(and others). It is obvious that the most important factor here involvesthe presentation of the most up-to-date evidence bearing upon linguisticand cultural issues. This is the motivation for all the works cited in thischapter, as well as Andersson and Trudgill’s discussion of ‘bad’language, and Bauer and Trudgill’s (1998) debunking of a score oflanguage ‘myths’. It is also the motivation behind many other works,