English-speaking Society Research Articles

Early EFL Education Is on the Rise in Oman: A Qualitative Inquiry of Parental Beliefs about Early EFL Learning

Today’s parents are more interested in having their children acquire English language skills as early as possible because they see the demands of the globalizing world context and contemporary trends in society and wish to ensure that their children can live in a future (quite possibly) English-speaking society. These developments, particularly in the Gulf Region in general and in Oman in particular, have led the educational sector to accelerate efforts over the last decade to initiate hundreds of early childhood education programs that offer bilingual education systems. However, no research has been conducted in the Omani context on parents’ beliefs about early instruction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL); claims regarding this issue remain speculative. This qualitative research study investigated parental beliefs about early EFL learning in Oman. Participants were 11 parents with children enrolled at a bilingual early childhood program. Interviews and a demographic survey were conducted. Findings revealed that parents are well aware of the benefits, challenges, and solutions of early EFL education. An exhaustive description of parents’ beliefs about early EFL learning was extracted. Implications and recommendations for research, policy, and practice are offered.

A created proverb in a novel becomes broadly used in society: “'Easily in but not easily out', as the lobster said in his lobster pot.”

C.S. Lewis created several proverbs in his novel The Horse and His Boy. One of these has now become broadly used in English-speaking society. This article cites evidence that this new proverb is now being used in novels, poetry, short stories, blogs, and in giving advice. Wolfgang Mieder has noted that there are very few published studies about proverbs created in the last century, so this article fills this gap regarding this proverb. The focus of this article is on the growing use of this proverb, not on proverbs generally.

Drama and the Hokuriku University ESS Club

For several years I served as advisor to the English Speaking Society (ESS) club at Hokuriku University (HU). During that time, beginning in 2002 or 2003 and continuing until 2009, the ESS club took part in a drama contest held in December every year. The purpose of this article is to describe the process the club went through to prepare for the contest and my role in helping them prepare. The plays are summarized for the benefit of those who might have interest in them. Finally, a few students give their comments about what being in the drama contest meant to them.

The Trial of Frederick Eberle: Language, Patriotism, and Citizenship in Philadelphia’s German Community, 1790 to 1830 (review)

Reviewed by: The Trial of Frederick Eberle: Language, Patriotism, and Citizenship in Philadelphia’s German Community, 1790 to 1830 Wolfgang Splitter (bio) Keywords Philadelphia, Germans, Lutherans The Trial of Frederick Eberle: Language, Patriotism, and Citizenship in Philadelphia’s German Community, 1790 to 1830. By Friederike Baer. (New York: New York University Press, 2008. Pp. viii + 272. Cloth, $48.00.) In her book on a militant conflict about the use of English in early nineteenth-century Philadelphia’s German Lutheran congregation, Friederike Baer tells the intriguing story of a community that was bitterly torn between fidelity to German culture and the Lutheran creed on the one hand and the inevitable need to adapt to Anglo American society with its promises of social advancement, political participation, and economic independence on the other. After the 1806 secession of numerous reputable [End Page 711] families and individuals, this conflict culminated in July of 1816 when the state of Pennsylvania tried 59 proponents of the exclusive use of German in the church on charges of conspiracy and rioting for beating several champions of English as the second language for preaching. Eventually, the court convicted the defendants, who received relatively mild sentences. Caught in an aporetic battle that held out little more than a Pyrrhic victory to the winner, both sides could justly claim a deep-felt commitment to their ancestral heritage and to the ideals of the American republic. Whereas the so-called German party insisted that the essence of the Lutheran teachings were captured best in the original German and therefore should be handed down to posterity in no language other than Martin Luther’s mother tongue, the English party was concerned that more and more young Americans of German descent, socialized in an English-speaking society, would no longer be able to follow a Sunday sermon or understand Luther’s catechism and hence were likely to leave the Lutheran church sooner or later. While the German party pleaded the right of American citizens strictly to abide by the language of their forefathers—which was not at stake here anyway—and to regulate all church matters free from encroachment by the authorities, the English party protested that their opponents not only put the survival of the congregation at risk by causing a mass exodus of young parishioners but also attempted to curtail their property rights by driving them out of a church to which they and their forebears had made substantial contributions. In addition, they emphasized the great benefits of moving with the times by cautiously yielding to the predominant influence of English. Based on her intimate knowledge of the relevant primary sources and secondary literature, Friederike Baer convincingly shows in her clearly structured work that this fierce and protracted controversy was much more than a family feud antagonizing recent arrivals and long-established Americans, German speakers and English speakers, “true” Lutherans and “sham” Lutherans. In analyzing this passionate as much as self-destructive struggle, her analysis unfolds a complex interplay of historical, cultural, social, economic, and political factors that, in a similar setting, also troubled Reformed and Catholic Christians of German extraction. If there is anything at all that Baer’s insightful book leaves to be desired, one might think of three points. First, since the author rightly stresses the importance of the protagonists’ socioeconomic background, [End Page 712] it would have been useful to find the scattered biographic information that she actually provides for certain individuals (especially in chapters 3 and 4) briefly summarized in a table listing age, date of immigration, profession, taxes paid, place of residence in Philadelphia, and membership in other German organizations. Such a table would have corroborated her arguments even more pointedly by facilitating the collation of the respective data for the two parties. Second, although Baer touches on marriage patterns of the English party in passing (139–40), she generally pays scant attention to intermarriage between German Americans and non-German Americans, European-born and American-born persons, Lutherans and non-Lutherans. Since marriage patterns are a crucial indicator of social cohesion, it would have been interesting to know more about both groups in this respect. After all, with German immigration slowing down markedly during and...

Evaluating the Development of Children's Writing Ability in an EFL Context

This study investigated the English writing skills developed by 42 children participating in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program for approximately 315 hr, spread over 18 months. The English writing abilities were measured 3 times in terms of grammar, content, coherence, spelling, and text length. A repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance demonstrated that the effect of time on the growth of writing skills was both large and significant: Grammar, coherence, and text length all showed substantial improvement in a linear progression; spelling and content developed in linear and quadratic trends. In addition, the improvement rate of grammar was similar to that of coherence, but text length showed a faster improvement. The vital common point was that students showed varying but remarkable improvements across all these components. This article makes idiosyncratic contributions to the understanding of young EFL writers and the longitudinal development of multiple writing components. This study may also serve as a reference for second-language educators as they notice (a) that these children achieved a high level of English writing skills although they did not live in an English-speaking society and (b) how they learned English in a curricular context where language acquisition principles were incorporated.

Exploratory study investigating the opinions of Russian-speaking parents on maintaining their children's use of the Russian language

This study explored why and how Russian speaking parents in an Irish context maintained the Russian language in their school-age children. Using a self-administered unstandardised questionnaire, the opinions of 16 Russian-speaking parents, reporting on 24 children, were surveyed. Of this sample, five parents were then interviewed using focus group methodology. The main findings revealed that Russian-speaking parents living in Ireland strongly supported Russian language maintenance in their families and wanted their children to be as fluent as possible in the Russian language. The reasons for the support of Russian language were: cultural preservation, general knowledge of languages in addition to English, and communication with the homeland. Methods employed to maintain the Russian language included conversing with children through Russian, reading and watching Russian TV/ DVD. Although most parents spoke only Russian to their children, just three children were considered by their parents to have sufficient language skills to interact through Russian in Russian speaking countries. Interestingly, 15 children were thought to have adequate skills in Russian to speak with those outside their immediate family when in Ireland. Congruent with other studies of bilingualism, development of English, or the secondary, majority language, was also important to parents, as they lived in a dominant English-speaking society.

Repositioning Refugee Students from the Margins to the Centre of Teachers’ Work

As several notable international scholars have argued, the standardised practices of schools are problematic for many students, since they reinforce the constructed identity of a predominantly white, middle-class, English-speaking society, relecting the predominantly mono-cultural nature of the teaching workforce. Students located at the ‘margins’ of this institutional identity are constructed as a minority. These students are mostly from families that are socially or economically disadvantaged, and often culturally and/or linguistically diverse. Refugee students occupy an especially ‘marginal’ position on these criteria. They represent a distraction fromwhat neo-liberal discourses have established as ‘central’ goals for schools, namely, a focus on outcomes rather than inputs, the use of standardised testing, and an auditing of student outcomes that places schools in competition with each other. Yet in the Western suburbs of Sydney, a region housing almost 10 per cent of Australia’s total population, where one third of the population is overseas-born, where half the world’s languages are spoken, and where approximately 80 per cent of all humanitarian refugees to NSW are settled, these ‘marginal’ students are more often at the ‘centre’. As a result of an increasing degree of school segregation over the past two decades, in some Western-Sydney schools, these so-called ‘minority’ students constitute a majority, and educating them is central to their teachers’ work. This paper reports on an action-research program based in several of these schools. It provides an account of a refugee support partnership that connects a University-based teacher-education program, local public schools, and a not-forproit agency whose mission is to support literacy development. Research data from this program indicate that the provision of one-on-one tutoring by student teachers results in substantial gains in refugee-students’ cultural understandings and academic achievements. The program also transforms the student teachers’ understandings of what it means to be a ‘good teacher’.

Buscando America: Why Integration and Equal Protection Fail to Protect Latinos

Equal protection doctrine, including the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, has done little to protect the equality of Latinos/as. This article provides an in-depth exploration of why equal protection fails to protect Latinos/as, focusing on inequality in education. Since at least the 1930s, Latinos have made legal challenges against school segregation and educational inequality. A paramount example of this struggle is demonstrated by Mendez v. Westminster School District, in which several Mexican-American families sued the school district to end the segregation of their children into inferior schools. This article discusses the many reasons why equal protection fails to protect Latinos in education, despite well-developed best practices for educating Latino/a students. First, the courts and society generally fail to recognize discrimination against minority languages like Spanish as a form of race discrimination. Second, the history of the education of Latinos/as demonstrates that the purpose of the educational system has been essentially to train Latino/as to become agricultural workers and laborers. The entire purpose of the educational system has been to assimilate Latinos into White, English-speaking society in a subordinate position. Equal protection jurisprudence also operates with assumptions of assimilation towards Whiteness and English-speaking. Implementing one-way assimilation towards Whiteness and English-speaking, however, denies the particularity and dignity of Latino/a identities and denies them equality. This is demonstrable in court decisions in various contexts, such as employment discrimination, jury service, and child custody decisions. Brown vs. Board of Education itself was based on similar, one-way assimilation towards Whiteness through attempted integration of public schools. This kind of reasoning denied equality both to Blacks and Latinos/as. The Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence has historically privileged Whiteness, and current conceptions of equal protection, while embracing integration, assimilation and “colorblindness,” continue to reinforce White privilege. This article then discusses what equal education should mean for Latino students and describes long-known, but rarely implemented, best practices for educating Latino students. Rather than integrating and assimilating Latinos into conformity with White, English-speaking norms, a system of bilingual education should instead provide them equal education through the acknowledgement and protection of their linguistic and cultural identities. To conceptualize equality as a one-way assimilation toward a White, English-speaking norm is irreconcilably opposed to the concept of equality for minority cultures.

Creolisms in an emerging standard

After showing that standardisation processes in spoken and written usage in Jamaica must be seen as distinct from each other, the paper focuses on the role of the creole substrate in the formation of the emergent written standard in Jamaica. The approach is corpus-based, using material from the Caribbean component of the International Corpus of English and, occasionally, from other digitised text data-bases. Jamaican Creole lexicon and grammar are shown to exert an influence on written English usage, but, generally speaking, direct borrowing of words and rules is much rarer than various forms of indirect and mediated influence, and the over-all impact of the creole is as yet limited. While probably no longer a typical English-speaking society (cf. Shields-Brodber 1997), Jamaica will continue to be an English-using one.

Speech as a Social Interface Device for English Learners : A Historical Study of the English Speaking Society in Japan

Speech as a Social Interface Device for English Learners : A Historical Study of the English Speaking Society in Japan

Bilingualism and the Academic Achievement of First- and Second-Generation Asian Americans: Accommodation with Or without Assimilation?

Recent scholarship claims that bilingualism has a positive effect on the academic achievement of immigrant children. According to this perspective, growing up speaking two languages is beneficial because it stimulates cognitive development and allows immigrants a means of resisting unwanted assimilation. Immigrant children who are fluent bilinguals can use their native-language ability to maintain beneficial aspects of their ethnic culture while accommodating to the linguistic demands of an English-speaking society. Using data on first- and second-generation Asian American students from the 1988 National Educational Longitudinal Study, we test for these hypothesized effects of bilingualism. We find no evidence that bilingualism per se has a positive effect on achievement. Instead, speaking a native language with parents has a temporary positive effect if the parents are not proficient in English. These results indicate that the academic importance of bilingualism is transitional: The educational benefits of delaying linguistic assimilation exist only before immigrant parents achieve a moderate level of English-language proficiency.

Bilingualism and the Academic Achievement of First- and Second-Generation Asian Americans: Accommodation with or without Assimilation?

Recent scholarship claims that bilingualism has a positive effect on the academic achievement of immigrant children. According to this perspective, growing up speaking two languages is beneficial because it stimulates cognitive development and allows immigrants a means of resisting unwanted assimilation. Immigrant children who are fluent bilinguals can use their nutive-language ability to maintain beneficial aspects of their ethnic culture while accommodating to the linguistic demands of an English-speaking society. Using data on first- and second-generation Asian American students from the 1988 National Educational Longitudinal Study, we test for these hypothesized effects of bilingualism. We find no evidence that bilingualism per se has a positive effect on achievement. Instead, speaking a native language with parents has a temporary positive effect if the parents are not proficient in English. These results indicate that the academic importance of bilingualism is transitional: The educational benefits of delaying linguistic assimilation exist only before immigrant parents achieve a moderate level of English-language proficiency.

Irish settlement and identity in South Africa before 1910

Although there has been a continuous Irish presence at the Cape of Good Hope since the late eighteenth century, the chroniclers of the Irish diaspora have until the late 1980s ignored the continent of Africa. This was in part because relatively few Irish migrants ventured to Africa, but it is also the consequence of two other factors. The vast majority of Irish immigrants to Africa in the nineteenth century went to South Africa, a region which, with some exceptions, has been academically isolated for a generation. Then within South Africa there is much still to be learnt about the nature of English-speaking society in the region. While the meticulous analysis of black and Afrikaner history and society, and of related economic history, has dominated South African historiography for some two decades, professional academics have too often left the field of South African English-speaking studies to the amateur historian and the antiquarian. Thus what in Canada or Australia would be regarded as mainline historical research has in South Africa been sidelined in the name of historical relevancy. In fact an analysis of Irish settlement in southern Africa fills an important gap in the general survey of Irish emigration to the empire and reveals a pattern of Irish settlement very different from other regions of Irish migration.

Languages in the school systems of England and Wales

This article outlines policy development and current educational provision for the languages of minority groups in England and Wales. The policy is set in the context of language policy making for pupils from the majority, English speaking society. The article examines how the dominance of English as the medium of education for all pupils in England is being actively re-inforced by the Conservative government in the implementation of the new National Curriculum, and also examines the growing contrast between policy for the so-colled ‘indigenous’ minority languages of Britain, specifically Welsh, and the newer minority languages of Britain and Europe, such as Urdu, Arabic, and Chinese. It is argued that the U.K. government has tried to distance itself from the conflicts involved in national language planning by the establishment of independent working groups, but in effect manages and controls the process through the setting of the terms of reference for each working group, and the differential allocation of resources to implement their recommendations. The implicit policy behind this control reflects the hegemonic concept of territoriality. The article concludes that if researchers are to provide useful language-planning frameworks for a mobile, intercultural society, they will need to deconstruct language-planning models which reproduce ways of thinking that attribute languages to territories.

School-Taught English And Bodily Functions

To the Editor.— When I started practice in Texas near the Mexican border in the late thirties, I had to learn Spanish, because many people spoke only Spanish. Since those days thousands of Mexican children have gone through public schools here, have been exposed to radio (much in English) and later to television (most in English), and have learned to live in an essentially English-speaking society and by and large have learned English well. Many now speak English rather than Spanish within their families. Probably Spanish will remain a living language in the United States along the Mexican border, yet for most people below forty English is their main and natural language, be the surname Herancourt, Hudson, Heliopolidou, Herrera, or Hugendubel. This is so in all respects, except one: Hundred of times I have taken a history from a teenage high school student who obviously spoke English well and who

One Method for Producing Automatic Control of English Phonology and Structure

The bilingual Mexican-American child represents one of the most vexing educational problems in Texas and other states in the Southwest. He represents problems that are only superficially similar to those posed by bilingual school children in the immigrant centers of the United States-European and Cuban immigrants, for example. He is unlike the European in that generally his ancestors lived in the area long before it was settled by the Englishspeaking society; he is unlike the European in that he has generally resisted total assimilation but, like the Puerto Rican, maintains a strong traditional pride in his cultural and linguistic heritage, however meager his knowledge of them might be. He is unlike the Cuban immigrants in that his parents usually are unskilled or semi-skilled laborers and farmers, with limited education and low socio-economic status.

V. The Two Societies: a Study of Town Life in Nineteenth-Century Ceylon

The English-speaking society of nineteenth-century Colombo, as in other areas in Ceylon gradually acquiring an urban character, was composed of two main units—the European, and the native. Within both were intricate subdivisions, which 'Sampson Brown’ described in a comic sketch of 1842:Glibb and I have had some rather long chats about the natives and their moral character. They certainly are a most repelling race: there's no making anything of them as yet, and I doubt if we ever shall…A native of one particular caste will not marry into or associate with another and so the whole race of them is split into small factions. This is bad enough say you, but…the white man's casterages [sic] as widely and deeply as that of the Buddhist…In Ceylon you find the Burgher caste, the Civil caste, the Military caste, and the Mercantile caste, all little worlds distinct from each other, travelling in different orbits. They would not dine with each other, I suppose, if their existence depended on it.

Patron-Peon Pattern Among the Spanish Americans of New Mexico

Patron-Peon Pattern Among the Spanish Americans of New Mexico