Today I told my students that they had to ask me a question, and before I answered, tell me what my answer would be. I also told them they couldn't ask the same question twice. I had questions about religion in America, about boyfriends in high school (actually Sarah handled all high school and popular culture questions), about Condileeza Rice, about the current popularity of George Bush, and about what sort of car I drive, and how many cars there are in the United States.
Like all young people, they struggle with stereotypes. They are appalled that some Americans know little about China, but know little about Latin America themselves. I repeat to them like a mantra that most English speakers in the world are not Americans, and themselves speak English as a second language, but they still want to learn American idioms. I indulge them to a limited extent, particularly when something is raised in the textbook, but mostly I try to focus them on their real use for English: in graduate school, and in the business world.
All of my students read and write more comprehensively than they speak, and their errors are the grammatical errors of people who think in Chinese. We used to have a Haitian immigrant in my section at the Attorney General's Office, and all of her grammatical errors resulted from direct translation from French. But as I remind myself practically hourly, my failure to speak good Chinese is not reflective of my overall intelligence, and their inability to express themselves in English is not reflective of their intelligence.
Even though they are young, it is aggravating to me that I know that no matter how hard they try, these young people will always have a significant Chinese accent. It seems unfair, they are in many ways quite fluent, yet I know they will suffer prejudice because of their accents.
No comments:
Post a Comment