Week 8

The Holliday reading provided a variety of examples of representation. I liked the first example of how Martha drew from conclusions of Mezas behavior, that he was bitter toward women and that he came from a country with issues that affected his views when he arrived in Canada. She presupposed on the basis of information gathered from the media and professional images. This hits close to home in the sense that I recently met two people with origins from the middle-east. It’s hard not to jump to conclusions when the media and the government are portraying these countries as terrorist-filled and evil. It’s interesting because I was told that in Kuwait they treat ESL instructors rather well. The universities or government, I’m not sure which, provide a computer, transportation, living quarters, and a job working and teaching English in their universities. It’s hard not to otherize people, and it takes time to make up your own opinion about a person. But I think it’s important that the person themselves influences your opinion, and not their friends, political figures, or what fellow Americans say about them.

I like how for the second part of the Holliday reading it didn’t just present a situation but rather media events to better show how media portrays what happened, and the opinions that we can draw from them. I especially liked the media presentation of abuse of women and how the book discussed that they way they worded the report it made it sound like abuse was directly related to the Islamic culture. And then they went on to discuss arranged marriages. The former church that I attended had a different way of doing the whole process that we call “dating”. In my church there was no dating, just fellowship with peers of the same denomination sharing their beliefs and love for Christ. When a man, or woman started having feelings for another person, they would pray about their liking, and that it may be God’s will that they ask for the other person’s hand in marriage. When doing this the man/woman would go to the elder of the church and that elder would contact the receiver of the proposal. And the receiver of the proposal would spend some time praying about God’s will and whether that included marriage to this specific person. If the answer was yes, the elder would be notified and their engagement would be announced in church the following Sunday. Now coming from this background, where my parents, grandparents, and siblings were married this way, I experienced a lot of judgment and even othering towards me. Since it seemed to an outsider of the church that “this girl” wasn’t even dating anybody, how could she be engaged was a common thought. This is where the idea of arranged marriages among this denomination came into play. It was hurtful being on the receiving end of othering but not near as hurtful as othering others for more serious reasons.

I also enjoyed reading about the study with the Brazilians and the images that they chose. I thought the questions that were chosen for the interviews were interesting to read as well as the responses.

Week 6

The first article spent time discussing the issues in rhetoric in regards to writing of non-native English speakers. He mentioned a few examples and studies such as Kaplan’s theory and its biases. The different patterns of the job application process for Asians, Americans, and Belgians. Later on he continued by comparing two different studies, one of which in Japan, and the other conducted and Senegal. In Japan they had students write a traditional student essay and then translating it to English and then the control group wrote a persuasive essay choosing a side of an argument and supporting it. The study basically showed that students were comfortable in writing the traditional five paragraph essay in comparison to the non-traditional. In Senegal, the students face two major difficulties in their writing. One of them was that they couldn’t organize their thoughts and discern a specific beginning, middle, and end. The other difficulty was that their first written language learned was French and in French the main format of writing is in dissertations (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis). Some students carried this format over to English creating an unsatisfactory essay (Connor 231).

Kubota discusses a variety of issues in his articles. At the beginning of his 1999 article he discusses a little bit about the differences between Japanese and North American culture. He talks a little about how we work in groups but to achieve success individually with constructive criticism with our colleagues whereas the culture in Japan is more collective group to all achieve that certain goal. I remember in one of my past TESOL classes a fellow classmate was discussing the taboo we Americans have on plagiarism and how in other countries, the need to “give credit where credit is due” isn’t as important. The mindset is that someone wrote/discovered/thought of something important and that information is meant to be used and shared to increase knowledge. It’s all more about teamwork rather than giving credit to specific individuals.

He continues to discuss Atkinson’s thoughts on how Japanese find that the idea of critical thinking promotes individualism, self-expression, and learning by using a language. I love how when discussing this topic he mentioned that ESL professors need to view critical-thinking as a “cultural practice”. This reminds me of the stereotyping article from last week’s reading. As discussed in that article, we supposedly claim that the Chinese stumbled upon their practical inventions and that these ideas didn’t require any critical thinking. In that article Kuma discusses how Americans a privileged with a higher level of critical thinking and that Asians cannot succeed in this area. That article was contradicting the stereotypes that we created, but in this article I find it offensive as well that they say we should claim this way of thinking as a “culture practice”. Do we really think that we are the only ones capable of critical thinking?

Further on in this article they talk about fixed cultures and beliefs and then briefly state contradictions. They give examples of American students being submissive and silent during class as opposed to newly adopted behavior among students in Japan that practice patriarchal values as well as self-expression. And the article continues with thoughts and research of educational theories and means of learning in Japan. And towards the end of the article, different models of teaching are discussed that are used in the classroom and issues that they provoke.

Week 1 Kuma Ch. 2 reading

In the third page of the this reading I like how they identifies culture not only as the artistic or aesthetic aspects but as the beliefs, norms, values, customs, etc. of a group of people. I also thought that it was interesting when the said that when a group of sociologists get together to discuss culture they never agree on a meaning. This really shows how abstract this concept is.

I’ve noticed that this article has many different points about how culture affects one person’s life, whether it be by guiding one to believe a certain thing, act a certain way, speak a certain language. By evaluating that this is how a culture influences a person’s life, it really shows that each person could share many different cultures. Each characteristic of a person could make them a part of a different culture which makes for a world of many, many cultures.

I like how in the third page they compared culture to an octopus. That is slow moving and changes over time. And it doesn’t always move at once but in disjointed movements causing change to other parts as well. This was an interesting metaphor to use in this article, but It’s also a lot like the ripple effect when it comes to one change in a culture affecting other cultures, even though it might not be in the same way.

I like how both readings also repeated the fact that a culture doesn’t have distinct boundaries but can also overlap with others and is always open to new people. I thought the term “otherization” was an interesting concept. It’s a good way to describe arrogance or racism or discrimination in my opinion. There are no cultures superior to others or inferior to others. But this is an important concept because it exists in every society. There will always be a group of people that have a ideal standard of what’s superior and acceptable and if other don’t live up to that standard, they are thought of as inferior.

In section 2.3 it says that “no two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality”. Then it goes on to say that people perceive reality in a different way if they speak a different native language because languages are so different that many things could be interpreted differently. I thought this was so awesome because since most of the time there is not direct translation from one language to another that things could be lost in translation and people can take away different meanings. I just thought that was a good quote from the reading.

Week 1, Holliday reading reflection

Reading about the differences between the essentialist view of culture and the non- essentialist view was interesting because they addressed a lot of different aspects that I had never thought of before. I think, for myself, I would indentify myself more with the non-essentialist view of culture, approaching it as a complex problem, that requires understanding of the people that are a part of these cultures. I really agree with the fact that one can identify themselves with more that one culture, and that there are different aspects of culture that could be similar or the same even though they may be in another country. I also liked when the book mentioned that culture is more related to values along with characteristics and not just the region and language.

In section B0.1.5 of Holliday, Baumann makes a point that I totally agree with, which is that people don’t see themselves as uni-dimensional, but as a member of several communities. For instance, if I were to associate myself with different communities, I would probably list, college student, Spanish major, waitress, runner, youngest sibling, and maybe even a blonde. Each person has so many different connections to different groups of people of different beliefs, routines, and hobbies. I also found in interesting how in the end of B0.1 they review how culture, community, and “cultural identity” are described as symbolic and abstract and require more thinking, and that a community is something that isn’t physically existent but more imagined.

“A culture penetrates its individual members mentally (so that they possess a certain mind-set), physically (so that they possess certain basic bodily dispositions), and socially (so that they relate to one another in certain characteristic ways).” I never thought of culture having such an impact on an individual. This statement covers every component of culture and how it affects a member of that culture. I also liked how later it went on to say that cultures are permeable and are technically open. When you think about it you can control if a culture influences someone or not, therefore cultures gain new members of the non-concrete society. In my life, if I consider myself a part of many cultures already, I can only imagine the more cultures that will become a part of my life in the future.

Reading about the topic of essentialism was interesting because I think of my brother and how his default view of cultures is completely different from mine. He tends to group/stereotype people by a certain characteristic which most of the time constrains his thoughts of the possibility of them being a part of another community or having different beliefs. On the other hand, I have a non-essentialist point of view. Perhaps this is because I have traveled more and immersed myself in other cultures. But even then, the right mind-set has to be there to really see how rounded and different each person really is.

heyyyy my name is Allison

So, just to introduce myself, my name is Allison Aupperle and I'm in my fourth year of college. My major is Spanish education with a TESOL minor. I'm from Peoria, IL and I'm a waitress here in Bloomington at Buffalo Wild Wings. After I graduate, I plan on teaching abroad for a few years.