Other emotional consequences for others

[Danielle E. Cyr]

Thanks for the reference to Paul Proulx, Stephane. And for all the tips on
dealing with emotional aspects of language teaching and learning. I do the
same, when teaching linguistics to speakers of Quebec French who believe
that their language is a "degenerated" form of European French.
As for the "naive Chomskyan" view on language, when I used the term lay
people, of course I meant every one, not only Aboriginal ones.
It's always a good idea to weave historical linguistics into any language
course.
Best,
Danielle
---- Original Message ----
From: stephane at goyette.com
To: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Sent: Wed, Mar 5, 2014, 6:12 AM
Subject: Re: Other emotional consequences for others
Mary Ann Corbiere-- 
There may be a deeper problem here: your story reminds me of the following:

Proulx, Paul. 1986. “Anxiety Management in Native language
Instruction”. In:  Cowan, William. PAPERS OF THE 17TH ALGONQUIAN
CONFERENCE. Ottawa, Carleton University. pp. 279-286. 
In a nutshell, Proulx describes the case of a native student, Johnny (a
pseudonym, naturally), Cree by heritage, who experienced extreme distress
when having to produce Cree sounds or structures (specifically Cree ones,
please note!). You and others may find it a fruitful read.   
The "naive Chomskyanism" Danielle Cyr referred to in another message (i.e.
the tendency to believe that the L1 of one's ancestors is somehow "inside"
your mind already), however, is a phenomemon that is pervasive among
non-natives, if my experience is any guide: I have experience teaching
French and Linguistics at several North American Universities, and I have
had many would-be learners of French who believed that their French family
heritage would gave them an advantage over their peers...and who, by the
time they realized that French would be no easier for them than for their
peers without French family heritage, had typically fallen behind, often so
much so that they dropped out of the class altogether. 
In my experience one good way of dealing with speakers of stigmatized
languages/dialects (in the classroom) involves being clinical. I once had a
semi-fluent speaker of Acadian French in a small French language class, who
seemed to be doubly ashamed (of not being fully fluent, and of the language
she wasn't fully fluent in being Acadian and not "real" (her words)
French). When presenting French grammar to the group that semester I would
make observations (to all students) about how some varieties of spoken
French, such as Acadian, differ from the standard. The semi-speaker
definitely seemed to become more motivated over the course of the semester
by my treating the differences separating Acadian from Standard French
systematically, by my showing which aspects of Acadian are similar to
standard French (grammatical gender and associated morphology) and which
are less similar (much of verb morphology), and she herself probably began
to see that these differences aren't due to the former being some kind of
degeneration of the latter (which is definitely what she seemed to believe
when the semester began). 
Another method (okay, tooting my own horn here) involves teaching
historical linguistics. I once had a native speaker of a working-class
British dialect (who was clearly very insecure about it) in a history of
the French language course, and when I described one of the changes
separating Vulgar from Classical Latin (loss of the /h/ phoneme), and
pointed out that a similar such change can be found in (for example)
working-class British accents today (including hers), she at first seemed
floored by the notion that her accent was something other than a mark of
collective moral and intellectual inferiority. As I went over the many
changes separating Latin from French, showing how all too many of them
(palatalization, /h/-dropping, loss of unstressed syllables...) are
operating in English today, she definitely seemed to accept, slowly but
surely, that lack of social prestige does not equal linguistic indequacy. I
doubt she remembers anything much from the class, but I like to think that
I contributed to reducing her linguistic insecurity.    
Stéphane Goyette.    
Mar 4, 2014 12:55:05 PM, ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
(mailto:ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG) wrote:
Hello everyone,
> 
I am heartbroken by the test I am currently marking. Why? Several reasons:
the student is a mature student (i.e. came to university perhaps 5 or 8
years after finishing high school - not sure if student went to college
before coming here); student's mother is a Native language teacher; test
was 'open book' in a sense. Since I don't want students too stressed out
about the assorted elements and patterns they need to know, I said they can
bring a cheat sheet consisting of one sheet using both sides and designed
any way that best helps them. 
> 
This is Test 2 of the course that follows introductory A. The course gets
into sentences with intransitive verbs and 1st and 2nd person actors. Test
2 entailed what, where, when questions with 3rd person actors (e.g. What's
going on there? When will he get back?). Tests from the very first one in
the intro course last fall always include a dialogue script translation.
The scripts use lines I imagine can be said in some realistic everyday
context and hence, as they progress through more lessons (i.e. more varied
structures), a greater variety of structures can be used making the
dialogues more realistic -- though not entirely since everyday speech by
fluent speakers naturally uses more complex structures periodically.
> 
In spite of that, the student can't bring in the appropriate puzzle pieces
let alone park them in the right spot, and so writes for example, "Aaniish
pii ga-meeting shkwaa-te?" when the sentence needs to say "Aaniish pii
meeting ge-shkwaa-tek?" The lessons give the elements needed and explain
thoroughly how to identify the elements needed -- e.g. "She's" is a
contraction of "She is" hence sentence is in present tense, etc. etc. etc.
Each lesson includes Gwejtoon ('Try it out') exercises after each section
and a self-test at the end of each lesson, and answers to all so students
have many models of sentence patterns, and conjugation tables, etc. they
can select examples from to include in their cheat sheets. 
> 
Does the student have some kind of learning disability? or was just
unprepared for the kind of work one needs to do in university? or just
assuming the language comes naturally to Native students? The student knows
some words and inserts such periodically -- e.g. maampii for 'here' to ask
"Max maampii na?' when the translation needed to be "Yaa na Max?" The verb
'be (somewhere)' -- which they've heard me use umpteen times in class -- is
listed in the mini-lexicon appended to each test so they don't have to
remember a bunch of verbs and other terms and their spellings.
> 
In any case, I imagine the student must feel stupid to see the mistakes
made. I emphasize to them that I'm always happy to give extra help to
anyone who would like it and the student has never asked for such. 
> 
What to do, when even the Nadia Comaneci's don't work?
> 
MAC 

>>>> "Danielle E. Cyr"  03/03/14 6:27 PM >>>
>Hi All,
> 
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.
> 
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.
> 
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 help yourself 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.
> 
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.
> 
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 !
> 
Hope this can be of some use.
> 
N'multioq m'set uen !
> 
Danielle Cyr
>
>
>---- Original Message ----
>From: Bernie 
>To: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
(mailto:ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG)
>Sent: Mon, Mar 3, 2014, 4:20 PM
>Subject: Re: Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in
the language classroom
>
> 
Hey Con,
> 
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.
> 
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.
> 
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."
> 
Hasta luego mi amiguito.
> 
berni
> 

>
>Sent from my iPad 

>On 2014-03-02, at 2:47 PM, "Conor Quinn"  wrote:
>
> 

> 
Dia dhaoibh, a chairde!
>
>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.
> 
>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.
> 
>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.
> 
>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.  
>
> 
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.
> 
>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.
> 
>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.  
> 
>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.
> 
> 
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.
> 
> 
Till later, keep safe and sane.
>
>Slán,
>do chara
> 

>
> 

>
> 
>
> On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 12:19 AM, Tanya Slavin  wrote:
> 
> Ben, thank you so much for the links. I'm definitely going to suggest
this documentary to the workshop participants. 
Tanya 
>
> 2014-03-01 14:20 GMT-05:00 Ben Levine : 
> 
> Hi Tanya - We made the documentary Language of America
(languageofamerica.com (http://languageofamerica.com)) 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
place.org (http://place.org). 
Please be in touch if you wish more information. 
Ben Levine and Julia Schulz 
> 
On Feb 28, 2014, at 8:24 PM, Tanya Slavin  wrote:
>
> Dear all,  
> [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!] 
> 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? 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! 
> Tanya 

>
> 
> 
> 
	


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