<html><body><font face="Tahoma" size="2">When I was working as an elementary school principal in a Mi'gmaq community, we had French Immersion, English Mainstream and Mi'gmaq. The latter was taught mostly orally. After only a few months in school, the French Immersion kids (G1) started to ask their Mi'gmaq language teacher to teach them written Mi'gmaq. I think we should listen to kids' wisdom.<div><br></div><div>And, when we teach adults, especially those who have been emotionally molested in so many different ways, we should absolutely have a few prep sessions to explain various universal language phenomena as well as language specific ones.</div><div>I've had the privilege to teach courses in Algonquian linguistic certificates (both for Mi'gmaq and Innu). It was really amazing what positive effects this kind of knowledge has on the students.</div><div><br></div><div>This being said, some students have learning difficulties/disabilities that cannot be dismissed. These may include dislexia, adult ADD, depression, substance use and abuse, family situations, long work hours, etc. </div><div><br></div><div>Also, there are students who don't know anything about learning strategies and practices. Especially when it comes to language learning. A lot of lay people have this kind of naive Chomskyan view on language, i.e. that their heritage language is "in them" and will pop out given minimal stimulation.</div><div><br></div><div>And, very marginally, I've noticed that metathesis seems to be somehow frequent among speakers of Algonquian languages. When we did our dictionary (Metallic, Cyr & Sevigny), I saw many occurrences of metathesis that were accepted as dialect and idiolect variations. This might explain why some students have difficulties in pronouncing syllables in the correct order. I'm not really sure if I have a point here, but ... it certainly reinforce my view that teaching the written form would help on this front as well.</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>Danielle</div><div><br><br><blockquote style="border-left: solid 2px #000000; margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px">---- Original Message ----<br><b>From</b>: Tanya Slavin <tanya.slavin@GMAIL.COM><br><b>To</b>: ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<br><b>Sent</b>: Tue, Mar 4, 2014, 12:47 PM<br><b>Subject</b>: Re: Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom<br><br><div dir="ltr"><div>Hi all,</div><div><br></div>Thank you for your insights! I really appreciate them. <div><br></div><div>Connor, you precisely describe what I witnessed myself in a native community up north, which is actually pretty well-off in terms of language health. When people would learn that I was a linguist working on Oji-Cree, the first thing they would often say to me (those were intermediate speakers or even actually fluent speakers of younger generations) would be "You know, I don't think I speak my language right. Elders make fun of me all the time." So, a lot of linguistic insecurity on the reserve as well, not just in urban centres, and also among pretty fluent speakers. (That also made me worry that they thought I was there to make sure everyone spoke proper Oji-Cree or something, so I felt compelled to talk about language variation on the local radio once.) Maybe it would be great to have a language class for different generations and/or different levels of speakers, where people would learn from each other and learn about language variation, and where learning the language would also be a way for them to connect.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Danielle, that's interesting that you mention that reading and writing should be emphasized more. Somebody on the other e-mail list also suggested a similar thing, that reading and writing should be taught prior to speaking as important confidence-building tools, or self-help tools, as you say.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Tanya</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2014-03-03 17:53 GMT-05:00 Danielle E. Cyr <span dir="ltr"><<a onclick="return checkLinkHref(this.href);" target="_blank" href="mailto:dcyr@yorku.ca">dcyr@yorku.ca</a>></span>:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><font face="Tahoma">Hi All,<div><br></div><div>I've seen all these factors at play in the community I worked with several years ago. It is, indeed, very difficult to counteract, especially in a culture where teasing and laughing at each other is pervasive. What helped a little bit was to explain language variation as a natural phenomena among languages. Another useful concept was language identity, both at the social AND individual levels.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Beside these, another tool that I would have loved but did not really happened. was the teaching of the written language and grammar. Teachers just held to the notion that their language was an oral one and, therefore, should not be taught through too much writing. Grammar, they tough, would discourage or bore the students.</div>
<div><br></div><div>However, it is known that teaching the grammar and the writing of aboriginal languages is key to keeping students motivated. Because, firstly, it provides a lot of <i>help yourself </i>tools, so students can make faster progress through studying on their own and memorizing morphological paradigms. It is a lot easier to start speaking when one knows all the verb forms of a conjugation, for instance. Secondly, students who have the opportunity to study and understand the grammar of their heritage language are usually in awe when they see the beautiful articulation and complexity of these languages. Pride is a great source of motivation.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Another thing too, is that it is of crucial importance to get the students to understand that learning a new language takes at least as long for an adult as for a child - more or less 3-4 years full time. So they have to be patient with themselves and with others. Once the have understood that learning a language takes time and patience, and a certain amount of modesty, if not humility, generally there are better results.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Finally, as we know, Aboriginal people love to joke, tease and laugh. So, engaging students to start telling jokes in their heritage language may prove to yield good results in terms of motivation. I say this based on my own experience. I've learned several languages, and I can tell you that when I reached the level of understanding and/or telling jokes, I felt I had achieved something. At some point, I was even able to make my Mi'gmaq teacher laugh. I had to prepare myself for the chapter on fishing. When my teacher arrived and asked me, in English, what I had done the day before, I had prepared a reply based on lobster fishing. I used all of my little knowledge in Mi'gmaq, saying that yesterday the weather was lousy, with strong winds, rain and big waves, but I didn't care and went lobster fishing even though. My teacher started laughing. And she laughed even more when I added : This is all true ! I'm no liar !</div>
<div><br></div><div>Hope this can be of some use.</div><div><br></div><div>N'multioq m'set uen !</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><br></div></font></span><div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">Danielle Cyr</font></span><div>
<div class="h5"><br><br><blockquote style="border-left:solid 2px #000000;margin-left:5px;padding-left:5px">---- Original Message ----<br><b>From</b>: Bernie <<a onclick="return checkLinkHref(this.href);" target="_blank" href="mailto:plnal@HOTMAIL.COM">plnal@HOTMAIL.COM</a>><br>
<b>To</b>: <a onclick="return checkLinkHref(this.href);" target="_blank" href="mailto:ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG">ALGONQUIANA@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</a><br><b>Sent</b>: Mon, Mar 3, 2014, 4:20 PM<br><b>Subject</b>: Re: Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom<br>
<br><div>Hey Con,</div><div><br></div><div>Unfortunately much of what you write is true. What hurts most in the Nova Scotia area is when fluent speakers knock the ones who missed out on the language because of the residential school experience. Some of these victims are lawyers today who are accused of not having/or told will never have an accurate understanding of the Mi'kmaw culture and therefore will NEVER be good representatives of our nation. Being told that due to their lack of facility in the Mi'kmaw Language, they're just not Mi'kmaw enough. This stings them very badly.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I set the wheels in motion to repair this erroneous way of thinking. Those lawyers will be my future students this summer coming. I'm hoping I will be able to get them to see things differently simply by lecturing on the conceptual differences between English and Mi'kmaw at least for starters.</div>
<div><br></div><div>It kind o' reminds me of Obama's plight with many people in the U.S. when it was stated that he just "wasn't Black enough."</div><div><br></div><div>Hasta luego mi amiguito.</div>
<div><br></div><div>berni</div><div><br></div><div> <br><br>Sent from my iPad</div><div><br>On 2014-03-02, at 2:47 PM, "Conor Quinn" <<a onclick="return checkLinkHref(this.href);" target="_blank" href="mailto:conor.mcdonoughquinn@MAINE.EDU">conor.mcdonoughquinn@MAINE.EDU</a>> wrote:<br>
<br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div>Dia dhaoibh, a chairde!<br><br></div>One of the harshest aspects of language endangerment that I've seen is that each generation gets slapped with shame no matter which way they go. The speaker generations get made to be ashamed for speaking their supposedly inferior (etc.) language, while the non-speaker generations get made to be ashamed for not being able to speak their heritage language. And people who are somewhere between completely fluent and completely non-speaker get shame(d) for not speaking it well enough.<br>
<br></div>The first kind of shame is the one that gets the most attention in language revitalization circles, but the latter two are just as pervasive and painful for those who experience it. And it's quite possible to experience all three at once, and/or in different combinations.<br>
<br>The last two strongly influence learner success and persistence. If you feel that (despite all the historical, social, etc. pressures outside of your control), you somehow "should" already know language, then it puts an enormous amount of pressure on you: "If I don't learn the language, I won't be [fill-in-the-blank] enough...AND it will disappear." This makes every stumble in learning the language even more fraught than it already is for any second-language learner. Which very often can be overwhelming, and drive people away completely.<br>
<br></div>So it's probably helpful to have these three kinds of shame brought up and out front, so that everyone can feel a lot safer. <br><br></div><div>Particularly since these feelings are most often experienced very individually. That there's something wrong with ME, that it's MY deficiency. Having that public/group acknowledgement that all of us are also going through one or more of these shames can help a lot. We're no longer individually isolated in them, and can work together to help each other find good ways to keep them from holding us back.<br>
<br>This also helps these three different groups work together better. If I'm a speaker with shame type #1, and you are a learner with shame type #2, we both might not fully understand what's worrying the other person when we go to speak the language. Since what holds us back might be really quite different.<br>
<br></div>This public acknowledgement is perhaps most important for intermediate-status speakers. It gets mentioned, but it still doesn't really get addressed nearly enough how often people who are not 100% perfectly fluent get shamed and scared out of speaking by the more fluent speakers. Not just the really harsh language policers---who very often call those speakers lazy/inattentive, not realizing that they were never given the same degree and quality of exposure to the language---but even people who just let themselves laugh at these speakers' errors. <br>
<br>These reactions terribly reliably drive great potential speakers back to the safer space of the dominating language. We can't ask all the fluent speakers to "please be nicer to and less judgmental of the less fluent speakers", but precisely because of that, it's that much more crucial to set up and constantly work to maintain safe places for them to speak what they can.<br>
<br></div><div>Public/group discussion of this range of feelings---helping people work their way to finally feeling that they really do have nothing to be ashamed of, and in fact plenty to be proud of---is, as far as I can tell, probably not just a good idea, but really essential.<br>
<br></div><div>Till later, keep safe and sane.<br><br>Slán,<br>do chara<br></div><div><br><br></div><div><br><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 12:19 AM, Tanya Slavin <span dir="ltr"><<a onclick="return checkLinkHref(this.href);" target="_blank" href="mailto:tanya.slavin@gmail.com">tanya.slavin@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Ben, thank you so much for the links. I'm definitely going to suggest this documentary to the workshop participants.<div>
Tanya</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2014-03-01 14:20 GMT-05:00 Ben Levine <span dir="ltr"><<a onclick="return checkLinkHref(this.href);" target="_blank" href="mailto:watchingplace@gmail.com">watchingplace@gmail.com</a>></span>:<div>
<div><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Hi Tanya - We made the documentary <i>Language of America</i> (<a onclick="return checkLinkHref(this.href);" target="_blank" href="http://languageofamerica.com">languageofamerica.com</a>) with just this use in mind. We show the film ( it’s 80 minutes divided into 12 minute chapters) or parts of it and use it to trigger an emotional response which then let’s students own their family and tribal experience and identity. We facilitate the discussion which is to say give the responder the support they need whether it be encouragement or connecting their experience to an other’s or even balancing conflicting responses, basically creating a safe space where the fragmented pieces of experience can come together. There’s more on the web site and also more about our work at speaking <a onclick="return checkLinkHref(this.href);" target="_blank" href="http://place.org">place.org</a>.<div>
Please be in touch if you wish more information.</div><div>Ben Levine and Julia Schulz</div><div><div><div><br><div><div>On Feb 28, 2014, at 8:24 PM, Tanya Slavin <<a onclick="return checkLinkHref(this.href);" target="_blank" href="mailto:tanya.slavin@UTORONTO.CA">tanya.slavin@UTORONTO.CA</a>> wrote:</div>
<br><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Dear all, </span><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
[I just sent this message to another mailing list, but I figured I'd send it here as well, apologies if you're getting it twice!]</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">We're having a local workshop on indigenous language teaching at the University of Toronto, an event organized for school and university language teachers to share ideas on some of the challenges specific to native language teaching in an urban setting. One of the topics that we hope to address in some way (perhaps as a roundtable discussion) is the question of how to deal with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom. One of the biggest obstacles for aboriginal students wishing to regain their language is the painful history of their relationship with it (e.g. their parents were forbidden to speak the language, they may have grown up discouraged speaking their language or feeling that their language was somehow inferior). All that baggage influences negatively their success in the classroom: they either reach a certain plateau or can hardly progress at all, or are unable to start speaking the language. As a result, the drop-out rate of native students in a university language classroom is much higher than that of non-native students wishing to learn a native language. I witnessed it myself when I was teaching Ojibwe in a university setting, and I'm seeing it now teaching it in a community setting. The question is how to deal with that and help these students succeed (also keeping in mind that they don't necessarily have the support of their community in an urban setting). Is it a good idea to actually raise this issue in the classroom, in order not to ignore the elephant in the room, so to speak? Would having separate classes for native and non-native students help the issue?</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">So I wanted to ask if anybody had any ideas about this they would be willing to share, or experiences they had, or any stories they have about students that were dealing with this obstacle. If that's ok, I'd love to share your ideas and experiences at the workshop (obviously, giving everybody credit for them), which would also hopefully generate a productive discussion. I would appreciate any ideas you might have, and thank you in advance!</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Tanya</div></div><div>
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