LRU-2150, kull-12/13

Multiculturalism

In this blog post I will start by discussing how we as teachers can help the pupils create positive attitudes toward different cultures and languages in a multicultural classroom. So first and foremost I will try to define what is meant by the term multiculturalism.  

Multiculturalism is usually referring to a country or a society where there co-exist people from more than one culture, and individuals that speak several different native languages. Rattanasi (2011) writes that multiculturalism “usually refers to policies by central states and local authorities that have been put in place to manage and govern the new multiethnicity created by non-white immigrant populations after the end of the Second World War.”

So I will further on discuss how we as teachers can help the pupils have a positive attitude towards different cultures.

Creating positive attitudes

In my opinion to create positive attitudes towards different cultures and languages, is all about knowledge and communication. A lot of the prejudice and negative feelings towards different culture comes from, in my opinion, a lack of understanding. We humans are created so that we fear what we don’t understand, and that creates negative attitudes towards different cultures. We as teachers have an obligation towards our pupils to enlighten them about these things, and not enforce the prejudice that exists out in the world today.  

Some concrete examples to how we as teachers can create positive attitudes toward different cultures and languages:

In most classrooms today, you will most likely have some pupils that have a foreign background, or they have some family that are not from Norway. This creates and excellent opportunity to let these pupils showcase their foreign background, their culture and their language. I was in a class in one of my practice periods where there was a lot of foreign students, so as a small way to let them be included, the pupils learned the rest of the class “Brother John” (Fader Jakob) in their own language. In my opinion this is a nice way to create some positive attitudes toward a different language. One other way to do this is by letting the foreign pupils teach the rest of the class some foreign children´s games or songs.

A good way to let the pupils get to know some other cultures is to have some sort of project that has the pupils learning about some different cultures. There are many different approaches to a project like this. The pupils could work in groups and finding out facts about different countries and present them to the rest of the class. Making food from different cultures is also a great way to let the pupils get to know different cultures.

Lastly I think that movies are a good way to start a conversation about some of the themes and discussing different cultures. Movies are a way to show pupils things that maybe are difficult to talk about, or would not have the same impact on the pupils. There is something about getting to actually see and hear a movie and learn about some these multicultural themes that can´t compare to just hearing a teacher talk about it. It does not even have to be a whole movie, there exist a lot good short clips on Youtube, NRK Skole etc. But when showing a movie in a classroom it becomes important to make the pupils aware that we are not watching a movie just for fun, but to learn something. So the talk with the pupils beforehand and afterwards is crucial for the pupils to get the most out of the movie.

Varieties of English

Jenkins (2009, p. 15) categorizes the English speakers into four distinct groups:

A native language (ENL): The language spoken by those who are born and raised in one of the countries that have English as their first language. This is the language that people born and raised in a country where English is the native or first language. These English speakers are mostly from the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand or Australia. 

A second language (ESL): This is the English spoken in a lot of territories like India, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Singapore. These territories are territories that has been colonised by the Great Britain, and that is mainly the reason why these territories speaks English as a second language.

A foreign language (EFL): This is the English that are spoken by those whom the language serves no purpose within their own countries.  These are countries like Norway or other countries in the Scandinavia.

Lingua Franca: This is when English is used as a “Bridge” language. A trade language, common language and a vehicle language. This can also be called an internal language, which means that it is used inside the country.

I feel that in Norway English has a status that can be considered to be somewhere between an EFL (foreign language) and a Lingua Franca. There are several reasons I believe this: English as a language is a foreign language in Norway, and in my opinion it has been more and more used in Norway in the last 20-30 years. A lot of people who attended school before the 80´s or 90´s are not very good users of English. In my opinion you can function in Norway, get a job etc., without knowing a lot of English. In these last 20 years or so, Norway has become more and more an international country. This has led to an increase in the interest in learning English, not just in school but also in the nature of the kinds of jobs that started to exist in Norway. If you are working in a larger corporation today, it is expected of you to have at least some basic oral skills in English. The reason for this is of course because if the corporations are making some kind of business with a foreign corporation, it is much easier if the employees can speak and write English.

The current state of affairs is, in my opinion, already affecting the way English is taught in Norway. Our world is getting more and more globalized and as I have previously stated, in a lot of jobs in the job market today, you are almost forced to be fluent in English. So I think that we as teachers have to be aware of that, and prepare the students for this. Our main responsibility as teachers is to prepare our pupils to become functioning individuals in our society.

Sources:

·      Jenkins, J. (2009) World Englishes: A Resource book for students. 2^nd edition. London: Routledge.

·      Rattansi, A. (2011) Multiculturalism: A very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press