Complex matter for sure

[Mary Ann Corbiere]

Hi Stephane,

That reference from 'before my time' (having started teaching
Nishnaabemwin 3 years after Proulx's article -- and by pure happenstance
after finishing my MBA in 1987) sounds very pertinent. Kroskrity &
Field's (as editors) book, Native American Language Ideologies, is
another one that delves into the complicated dynamics at play in
language preservation endeavours. The project of preserving/revitalizing
languages has so many crosscurrents arising from identity, cultural,
political and historical experiences and the trauma of having been
colonized that would not exist for one studying a language purely from
academic interest of the sort I for example have with regard to German.

Linguistics is a handy tool. If only we could convince those students
who seem to not have gotten a solid grounding in grammatical concepts in
high school that understanding the difference between such things as
nouns, verbs, and adverbs is very helpful for making sense. Not that a
prescriptivist approach needs to be adopted. We can worry about which
patterns ought to be formalized into rules governing what will be seen
as proper (and by which 'authority') once we get Native languages back
on to a solid enough footing that a literature in diverse genres
actually takes root. 

MAC

>>> <stephane at GOYETTE.COM> 03/05/14 6:15 AM >>>
 td,th{border:1px dotted #888}body{overflow:auto}   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
theseparating 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 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" <dcyr at YORKU.CA> 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 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 <plnal at HOTMAIL.COM>
>To: 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"
<conor.mcdonoughquinn at MAINE.EDU> wrote:
>
>
 

>       Dia dhaoibh, a chairde!
>
>
One of the harshest aspects of language endangerment that I'vego.  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 <tanya.slavin at gmail.com>
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 <watchingplace at gmail.com>:  
> 
> Hi Tanya - We made the documentary Language of America
(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 supencouragement 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. Please
be in touch if you wish more information.
 Ben Levine and Julia Schulz
   
>  On Feb 28, 2014, at 8:24 PM, Tanya Slavin <tanya.slavin at UTORONTO.CA>
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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