A Step From Heaven

     The perception of America as a land of hope and opportunity motivates Ju's family to pick up their lives and move across the sea. Though, there is more to the story than this. There are lives involved, the young and the old. The perception of an american girl is pressed upon young Ju. Her mother perms her hair so that she can better fit into the physical idenity of a "Mi Gook" girl. This may make Ju be confused about her identity. Her new enviroment will also need for her to learn a new language. One that her family does not know, though if she does not learn it, no one will. This must be an aweful feeling and very stressful for her. And on thop of this she has to lean the curreculum in school.
     It seems that just as soon as she learns the American culture, her parents are afraid she has forgotten her past. Young doesn't want her new American friends to see how "weird" her parents are or the poverty in which they live,

Waiting for Heaven: "Mi Gook is only for young people to have a new start" (21).
It seems that Ju, though she is young, is starting to feel the pressure of what is expected of her.


My Future: "I do not like the word future. Everything is in the future" (28).
I think hope plays a role in this kind of thought. Hope for a better future for their children, and hope that they can break the cycle of their life. There is also much pressure placed on Ju's future in her new enviroment.

Park Joon Ho: "He laughs. You are a girl, Young Ju...Leave her to dream. Do not be so harsh" (38).
Ju also has to deal with the sterotype of a girl in America.

There is also a motif of the Sea. What does this mean?
     Uncle Tim is holding champaign with "foam from the sea" spilling out.
     The Sea they fly over.
     Sky Blue Dress at the ceromony.
     Amamda birthday is at the beach
     As the Sea Threatens to Drown my heart (112). Because she has experanced a life that she likes with the Doyals, in compairson she does not like her home life with her familiy.
     When her father hits her she imagines that she is drounding. Death by something that once promiced so much hope.

There is more to a person than just the surface. It is easy to assume that there are no inner troubles when there the person does not vocalize them, but I think it is then that they want to have a voice even more.

Disappearing Bubbles:"I nodded and said yes, even though I did not know what cider was" (54).
This reminds me of the text that we read last class. Communication breakdown. This made Ju feel very self concious, enough to where she did not want to speak up and confess that she did not know.

She then confesses that she often tried to look up words in the dictinary though they did not always make sense. I remember being in Spanish class and doing the exact same thing. It is a feeling of loss and confusion.

"I do not know why I have to speak Korean at home so I will not forget where I come from" (55).
Her two worlds are being kept seperate. This must take a tole on her identity.

Making Sure: It has to be odd being depending on so much at such a young age. Apa seems to have his own issues. He wants to play the male role, but can not due to his lack of english.

Reaching: "If I catch a cloud I'll make it to heaven." Her perseption of heaven has changed. Again, a hope for a better place. Ju seems so old, the way she acts, the way she thinks.

My Best is not Enough: Strangling me with your hopes. 96.

They are all living on hope. What does anyone live on?

"We are Korean do not forget" 104

"What good is God going to do"

Didn't they initally want Ju to become an American girl, I wonder what changed their viewpoints on American girls. TV? Newspapers? Maybe they are worried because they do not know.

What influences a person most?

Ju seems to have a confliction of role in her life. She acts like a adult in her household, though her father provides conflicting feedback on this. She is responsible for her brother becasuse she is the one that speaks English and can answer phones.

What does she really have to go back to. Even if she does go back it will be another foreign envoriment for her. Her culture is a mixture of both.

So, in TESOL should the parents be helped through the process of adjusting to their enviroment as well as the children. This would, or might, take stress off the children.

Finding a Voice

There is no definitive answer to the integration of the language learner and the language learning environment. Diversity in the classroom, just as educators need to reach the diversity in non-ESL classrooms, need to address the students differences and adapt their teaching strategies to best fit the students needs both on an individual and a communal scale. The purpose should be to find unity within the class so students from different cultural backgrounds have a base of commonality to communicate in.  In Peirces text, Social Identity, Investment, and Language Learning, he state4s, “We can see language as a way to identify with ones surroundings…” To better the student it would be beneficial to them to become acquainted with their environment. They should have an understanding and exposure so they can produce mental definitions of those items. Assimilation into a new language, and in turn a new culture, could then be an easier path. If the learner is not comfortable with their surroundings a learning block may develop.

            According to Peirce, ”…this affective filter comprises the learner's motivation, self-confi-dence, and anxiety state-all of which are variables that pertain to the individual rather than the social context.” The unknown is always frightening. It is also stated that, “In the field of SLA, theorists have not adequately addressed why it is that a learner may sometimes be motivated, extroverted, and confident and sometimes unmotivated, introverted, and anxious…”.  Humans contain multitudes. There is no absolute to a human emotion, nor is there an absolute to why a learner may feel motivated, unmotivated, introverted, or extroverted. Here the individual should be looked at and not grouped into the category of ESL, male or female. No one should be souly labeled as an introvert or an extrovert. The comfort level depicts how loose a language learner might be. From this I would like to propose the language learner be introduced to the culture and environment by means of their own language initially and then interweave both the two dynamics of learning. This may also make the student comfortable and become “an extrovert” to ask more questions thus, learning more from the unparallel of their mind. There should be no assumptions to why the connection of content is not being communicated to the learner. However, positive reinforcement and a constant strive to understand learners are vial to the learning and teaching process.

Culture in the Classroom

                

Learning about Culture

Can we ever fully understand and empathize with another culture? Within the confines of a classroom it is often difficult to teach and expose students to different cultures. Even with the exposure of different texts and examples culture may not be fully understood. It is the educators as well as the students’ responsibility to engage in multiple discourses in regards to cultural diversity. With this said, it is first important to recognize how we acquire culture, and what culture truly means.

According to Culture in Second Language Teaching and Learning, culture is a “historically transmitted sermonic network constructed by humans which allows them to develop, communicate and perpetuate their knowledge beliefs and attitudes about the world” (30). Common cultural attitudes create a common ground in which there is a predisposed understanding to a person’s idea. People may share a common lexicon which makes it less complex and effortful to communicate.  This also makes metaphors, a common learning tool, easier to assimilate and understand. A mental representation of a word may be different across culture. For example, when you think of the word “bread” what comes to mind? A slice of bread, a loaf, a sliced open roll? All of these mental representations can be seen as difference in cultural values. Though, how we obtain individual values is determined on our past experiences. So, how can a teacher, with students with many different backgrounds and cultures assimilate then all into a respectful and communal understanding with one another?
Presented in Winrergerst's text, Exploring Culture, are six tips to help both students and teachers with the concept of culture. "1. Have students articulate their own definition of culture, 2. Raise culture to a conscious level, 3. Point out the hidden aspects of culture 4. Point out how cultures may value the same thing differently, 5. Help students understand how culture works, 6. Build awareness about the stress caused by cultural adjustment" (Winrergerst 2). One of the first and most difficult aspects of learning about culture is mentally displacing ourselves out of our own culture. If this is achieved it is easier to examine our own environment and then begin to compare and contrast it to others.  If it is true that a person can fully understand the complexities of culture, exercises such as the one listed above is a good way to begin that process within the confines of a classroom.

Defining Culture

            Culture is like a slight breeze, it may go unnoticed, though is constantly moving and changing as time progresses. After reading Morgan’s text on defining culture, we can further identify this concept of culture as a not only a noun, or essentialist, but also as a verb, or non essentialist. Morgan defines and deconstructs culture in a few different contexts. He states,  “…the persons of the culture are the process of activity creating, changing products, practices, perspectives and communities” (24). He identifies culture as an active, living thing that, like the breeze, travels, and changes.  Some of these aspects, such as products, are tangible, but it is often the non tangible aspects of culture, such as perspectives as Morgan illiterates in an iceberg, that may be often overlooked especially in the classroom.

            A lesson activity that I appreciated in Morgan’s text was his activity “Analyzing the Cultural Phenomenon” (28). The purpose in this activity is to examine the interconnectedness of the five dimensions of culture. Some of the topics are a restaurant, a musical instrument, a food market, or a concert. By identifying students answers to these questions the instructor and the student can better identify some different aspects of culture.

            I am also very interested in language and culture. Language not only is used as a vessel to communicate ideas, though can also be seen as a projection of a person’s identity. An example of this can be seen in the standardization of American English. Americans had a want to separate themselves from the English to create their own identity. The standardization of American English that came with the publication of Noah Websters dictionary in 1828 developed different ways to spell certain words. For this reason, diction, syntax, dialect can develop communities identity and culture.  However, how does language, seen as part of identity, used in a classroom of students that is being taught the English language?

            Prescriptive language is the standard language and grammar. This use of language have a “correct” and an “incorrect” usage. This is what is typically taught in an academic setting. Descriptive language and grammar is how people actually speak, which can be translated into writing. In a classroom a teacher has the challenge of supporting the cultural aspects of language, but also enforcing the learning of prescriptive language.

My name is Bianca I am an English Education major.