Essay Standard English

Having the insight as a former student and a present educator, Linda Christensen wrote about her views on the way English is taught to students in her essay“Teaching Standard English: Whose Standard?” Christensen

It was diappointing to see the antipathy against the use of AAVE. Pollum also mentions that this negative attitude towards AAVE is related to the prejudice still targeted on African American people. I think the dichotomous thinking of the variations of English of that time is stilll present nowadays. Standard English has a much higher prestige than the AAVE or any other variation of English. In my opinion, devaluing students language pattern in school has no benefits, nor does labelling any language or dialect bad or unaducated just because it differs from the standard. It should be called

2 of material seen as a tool and seeing those who are Indigenous as a third person plural, meaning to spend more time talking about Indigenous Australians instead of being with them. This construct is an example of the marxist literacy theory displacing the linguistic positioning. This is evaluated throughout the text bringing evidence to support linguistics, but offers instead a constructed reflection on social institutions in relation to grammar and

In Australia, accent can be an important marker of identity. Users may adapt their accent in order to modify the way that others perceive them. Clothier supports this suggesting that individuals may change the way they speak, depending on the context, ‘to emphasise different identities.’ Historically, the cultivated accent has been given higher prestige than the broad accent. Users may therefore modify their accent to present a more prestigious identity in formal situations such as a job interview or whilst in court. For example, a broad speaker may modify their pronunication of the word ‘bite’ from the broad [ɒɪ] to the cultivated [aɪ], or ensure they avoid the deletion of [h] in lexemes such as ‘helmet’ and ‘happen.’ However, in more recent

Without a doubt, our language usage is becoming increasingly casual. Some argue that this is due to the influence of American culture. While it is not pervasive, the assimilation of American culture in Australia can be partly responsible for this trend. However, the predominant reason for our informal language use is due to increasing connectivity through social media and other modern communication services. Despite this trend, the register of discourses is still dictated by the context and setting of the situation.

The languages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders hold a very special and rich part of their heritage.

Around 41per cent of Indians communicate in Hindi as their mother tongue. Different languages includes Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit, and Hindustani. But English is the only official language of Australia and is spoken at home by around 80 per cent of Australians. Although it is not an Australian language, the manner it is spoken reveals something about the type of divisions that have shaped the Australian identity. Australia has no variance in accents according to class, race or region. Instead, the accent varies according to ideology or gender. (Vicziany, M.)

For indigenous Australians, the use of traditional language is crucial to their identities as it is closely connected to cultural heritage and knowledge, both of which are passed on throughout each generation by their languages (Walsh & Yallop 191). In this community, there are number of various dialects spoken by different tribes of people. Each language represents the identity and culture of its speakers. Therefore, even though everyone in this community speaks Yabuyawung language, we cannot allow the school to use only one language. If we allow the school to use only one language, we cannot help maintaining our own ancestral languages for future generations. And also, the choice of Yabuyawung in both regional cities and outstations are complicated because there is a flow of young people in outstations away from their community to the

In his article “Good English and Bad”, Bill Bryson focus on how English rules were changed throughout history. He stresses that people should not worry about how to use English correctly too much because English comes from Latin and it is not necessary to follow Latin rules in English. While in the article “Why Good English is Good for You”, John Simon stresses how English must be used in a proper way by following its rules. Simon believes that good English can express one’s idea clearly and people should spread it. Although Bryson and Simon have different perspectives on the way how people use English, the requirement of standard English rules should vary depending on different situations.

Other forms of the English language are developed from speech communities with an intention, for efficiency and to show inclusion, and to exclude others. It also helps to convey a specific identity of the speaker, with the use of syntactic and phonological differences from Standard English. These modifications form non-standard dialects, transferring the speaker’s cultural background and language to provide a better perception and reflection of identity. The falling intonation accompanied with interrogatives in the Asian ethnolect, such as ‘Gravy?’, is the opposite of the rising intonation used for the same purpose by Australians, and can quickly cause conflict between the two communities due to the missing benchmark in language. Pronoun deletion in ‘No like’ (‘I don’t like it’) is a feature of many ethnolects (Greek, Aboriginal English), and is differing from the Standard, yet still helps to get the message across. Ethnolects develop from Standard English, and helps to express a user’s identity through their language use and in-group solidarity within the speech community.

Another issue to consider when reviewing EAL curriculum is the politicalness of the English language teaching itself. It is for sure that English proficiency is critical for individuals to “intergrade” into the English-speaking society, but as a compulsory subject, it is arguable if more emphasis should be put onto the students’ native languages. The case of Aboriginal or Torres Islanders students is a controversial example. While the public sector and many scholars has been trying to preserve the cultural and language heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Islands, the current education system means that students can only succeed using English. While it is likely that only a fundamental change to the entire system in Australia can really improve the current situation, it is still a critical issue that politicians, educators and curriculum designers should bear in mind.

In the introduction, the author discussed the background and research that concerned about the beliefs and practices of English language

my identity of being an English language teacher pushed me to be accurate about the information I delivered to my students. At that time, every English teacher was required to teach “Standard English”. My understanding of “Standard” was “Standard” grammar and “Standard” pronunciation since these areas were constantly tested by the university as well as by the Board of Higher Education. I thought I would never achieve this political expectation because I could stick to the grammar book but I could not force my students to speak English the same way to make their English “Standard”.

Individuals are may choose to adopt a particular non-standard variety of English and indeed its accent through convergence, divergence or maintenance for a number of reasons. Firstly, standard varieties are usually considered the superior variety. An individual with ‘linguistic insecurity’(Labov 1966) will by convergence seek to adopt the variety associated with the higher social class and to disavow those of the lower social class from which they may have come or fear that they might be associated with. A writer may choose to adopt a variety in the same vein to appeal to his target audience.

Shaw made a special recording on ‘Spoken English and Broken English’ for Linguaphone Institute. The English language – the way it is written and spoken and the way it should be written and spoken – was a favourite theme of Shaw.