Crickets Chirp

[cathschaffstump]

The ever present philosophical question: is hearing nothing better than getting rejections? My writing mailbox is pretty quiet right now.

Work still continues comparing English teaching in Japan and in the US. What I’m learning right now is that Japanese students prefer adhering to the native speaker model, at least in one pilot study done in Nagoya.

Nativism seems to run counter to embracing World English. Depending on the purpose of English, say, for example, to succeed in a US classroom, nativism may be a preferred model. What generally occurs in any given communication is a negotiation between accuracy and comprehensibility, and I wonder if the Nativists are too much in the former camp, and the proponents of World English are too much in the other.

Enough of that. I’ll get you back to faerie princesses as soon as I can. However, if any of you closet linguist eggheads want to weigh in, I’m here for you.

Professionally yours,
Catherine

Originally published at Writer Tamago. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[cathschaffstump.livejournal.com]

Certainly, that's part of the phonological features of katakana, and there is a movement around the world to accept such variances of English as "World Englishes," validating words like beeru as okay.

You can imagine the controversy.

However, at this point in Japan, the Japanese are trying to embrace a more communicative practice of language instruction, especially at the tandai where I did my work last year. At the same time, students want to speak like native speakers. At the same time, they don't.

It's a fascinating set of sociological problems.

Catherine