{"id":373,"date":"2012-06-18T09:13:08","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T09:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/?p=373"},"modified":"2025-03-17T09:13:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T09:13:47","slug":"the-burden-of-understanding-the-challenge-for-english-language-learners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/the-burden-of-understanding-the-challenge-for-english-language-learners\/","title":{"rendered":"The Burden of Understanding: The Challenge for English Language Learners"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my second year as a doctoral student, I worked with a professor who was finishing his first book.\u00a0 Among my many tasks was to help him write footnotes for his first chapter.\u00a0 This is how I was introduced to Rosina Lippi-Green\u2019s\u00a0English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States<\/em>\u00a0(1997).\u00a0 Although a bit dated, many of the points she makes are still salient as we consider creating and implementing effective policies to assist English Language Learners (ELLs).<\/p>\n

Based on a cognitive model for communication acts, Lippi-Green (1997) suggests that within a given communication act, both participants share\u00a0mutual responsibility<\/em>\u00a0for collaborating with one another to ensure that they each understand.\u00a0 This is often a subtle, yet complicated process among the speaker and listener that can go unnoticed in situations where the speaker and listener share the same language and\/or accent.\u00a0 However, when the participants do not share first language and\/or accent, \u201cthe first decision they make is whether or not they are going to accept their responsibility in the act of communication\u201d (p. 70).\u00a0 It\u2019s not so much the degree (or some might say, thickness) of accent which determines a person\u2019s willingness to collaborate in building understanding with the other, but one\u2019s state of mind in regards to the other\u2019s accent that is a clearer indication of whether one will accept responsibility for understanding.\u00a0 Specifically, Lippi-Green (1997) states:<\/p>\n

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Accent\u2026can sometimes be an impediment to communication even when all parties involved in the communicative act are willing, even eager, to understand.\u00a0 In many cases, however, breakdown of communication is due not so much to accent as it is to negative social evaluation of the accent in question, and a rejection of the communicative burden (p. 71)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lippi-Green (1997) goes on to point out there is an internal mental process each of us goes through that leads us to respond to some accents in different ways than others.\u00a0 She calls these \u201csociolinguistic cues\u201d which:<\/p>\n

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\u2026are directly linked to homeland, the race and ethnicity, the social self of the person in front of us.\u00a0 Based on our personal histories, our own backgrounds and social selves (which together make up a set of filters through which we hear the people we talk to), we will take a communicative stance.\u00a0 Most of the time, we will agree to carry our share of the burden.\u00a0 Sometimes, if we are especially positive about the configuration of social characteristics we see in the person, or if the purposes of communication are especially important to us, we will accept a disproportionate amount of the burden (p. 72).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As we enter interactions with others we are always choosing how to respond, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously.\u00a0 To illustrate, I\u2019ll share a story.\u00a0 It is about a fellow graduate student.\u00a0 She\u2019s from Taiwan and speaks English fluently.\u00a0 Although her parents pay her tuition and provide her funds to live on, she feels a sense of responsibility for doing what she can to defer costs so a few years ago she set about getting a teaching assistantship.<\/p>\n

International students are required to go through a series of tests in order to demonstrate their command of the English language.\u00a0 It starts with the English Proficiency Evaluation which is given to all incoming international students to determine whether they are eligible to take full academic courses, enroll in English as a Second Language classes for credit, or enroll in Intensive English Program.\u00a0 After that, they must first take the English Speaking Proficiency Assessment (ESPA) which assesses their oral language and listening skills.\u00a0 A score of 50 or 55 enables students to pass that portion and move on to the English Language Performance (ELPT) which is a presentation to an audience in the student\u2019s content area for 20 minutes[1]<\/a>\u00a0the day after they receive their ESPA results.\u00a0 This test assesses the international students\u2019 ability to communicate in English in a classroom situation.\u00a0 The student must introduce themselves, become familiar with the context and people assessing them, give a 10 minute demonstration, then answer questions.\u00a0 Students taking the ESPA and ELPT are rated on an A-F classification that determines the kinds of work (including classroom teaching to grading papers) they may do as graduate teaching assistants.<\/p>\n

My friend understands English very well.\u00a0 I have taken several classes with her, had her over to dinner with my family and we often hang out.\u00a0 When she first told me that she was taking the \u201cspeak\u201d test (which is what she called it), I thought for sure she would easily pass.\u00a0 Nonetheless, I agreed to help her prepare.\u00a0 We played Scrabble and other board games, she ran through prospective topics for her demonstration, and we talked casually as well as about topics in our field.\u00a0 Much to my surprise, she failed the ELPT test, not once, twice, but three times.\u00a0 She was distressed. As an onlooker, the process greatly frustrated me. \u00a0The message she received was that her English wasn\u2019t \u201cgood enough\u201d which didn\u2019t make any sense to me because there\u2019s never been a time when I didn\u2019t understand every word she said.\u00a0 This is where I began to understand Lippi-Green\u2019s (1997) point about the burden we place on English Language Learners in order to be understood.\u00a0 When I think about it, I have to admit that I bring into our conversation a knowledge that her \u201caccent\u201d is supposed to be hard to understand.\u00a0 According to Lippi-Green (1997):<\/p>\n

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\u2026for the majority of Americans, French accents are positive ones, but not for all of us.\u00a0 Many have strong pejorative reactions to Asian accents, or to African American Vernacular English, but certainly not everyone does.\u00a0 The accents we hear must go through our language ideology filters.\u00a0 In extreme cases, we feel completely justified in rejecting the communicative burden, and the person in front of us (p. 72).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As a result, I consciously make myself do the work on my end in order to understand her.\u00a0 I\u2019m very conscious that in many situations, she\u2019s asked to repeat herself, to re-explain herself, and to do a lot of work overall in order to be understood, and I don\u2019t wish her to have those same difficulties with me.\u00a0 So I\u00a0choose\u00a0<\/em>to do the work I need to do to meet her halfway.<\/p>\n

To me, this story illustrates how our own approaches and frames of reference often determine our own willingness to share the burden of understanding.\u00a0 Unless we\u2019re made more aware of our own proclivities toward unconsciously and consciously deflecting responsibility in our everyday communicative interactions, we will continue to discriminate against those who don\u2019t share our first language, accent, and\/or ways of speaking.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a>\u00a0Students who receive a score of 60 or higher are not required to take the ELPT.<\/p>\n

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NOTE: This blog was first posted on the West Wind Education Policy Inc., website on June 18, 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my second year as a doctoral student, I worked with a professor who was finishing his first book.\u00a0 Among my many tasks was to help him write footnotes for his first chapter.\u00a0 This is how I was introduced to Rosina Lippi-Green\u2019s\u00a0English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States\u00a0(1997).\u00a0 Although a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":375,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testv69.demowebsitelinks.com\/LiminalConsultingWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}