Here is the link of this article.

Last week, linsier and I have participated into the conference of EWOB. In that conference, we presented our research about the L2 learners’ frame of references and the role of community. This is our first present in a conference like this.  Thanks to those encouragement and inspiration from our peers, teachers and other researchers, we finally compeleted our presentation.

I will  provide the abstract as follow:

    After 1990s, researchers have shifted their focus more on social context and the influence of
interaction and social practice on the process of second language learning (SLL). Classroom has
become a key site for researchers to study how interaction between teachers and students or among students impacts on SLL. However, they seldom pay attention to how the participation of outside classroom activities and local communities such as working place, and peer networks affect to
students progress on language learning and their social identity reconstruction. Our presentation first quickly reviews the development of socio-cultural theories and critical sociolinguistics in SLA. We then present the interviews done by ourselves and our colleagues, and discuss the ways local communities and target language speakers facilitate or constrain L2 learners to access English. We will also examine how L2 learners alter their identities when they shift their frame of reference from native speakers to bilingual users in SLL. Finally, we will explore the differences between two related, but far different viewpoints: researcher views and learners perspectives on the translation of learners
identities.

If the world had a say in the U.S. presidential election, Democratic candidate Barack Obama would wind up in the White House with a clear margin of victory.

A worldwide poll conducted by eight major newspapers found Obama would receive four times the votes his opponent, Republican candidate John McCain, would receive on Nov. 4, if the world was allowed to vote. Residents of Canada, France, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Switzerland, Great Britain and Belgium were involved in the poll.

Obama was the favoured candidate in all of the countries where polling was completed.

In Switzerland he had the highest approval rate, with a whopping 83 per cent of support. McCain only had seven per cent support in Switzerland. Obama’s approval rating was second highest in Canada, with 70 per cent of Canadian respondents saying they would vote for the senator from Illinois.
McCain had 14 per cent support in Canada — twice his support in Switzerland but still well short of Obama’s numbers.

McCain’s strongest support was in Poland, where he had the support of 26 per cent of respondents. But although it was his best showing in the eight countries where polling was done, McCain was still well behind Obama’s 43 per cent support — a 17 point lead with less than three weeks before the election.

Respondents, who would vote for McCain, if they had a vote:

Canada: 14 per cent
France: 5 per cent
Switzerland: 7 per cent
Poland: 26 per cent
Japan: 13 per cent
Mexico: 13 per cent
U.K.: 15 per cent
Belgium: 8 per cent

Respondents, who would vote for Obama, if they had a vote:

Canada: 70 per cent
France: 68 per cent
Switzerland: 83 per cent
Poland: 43 per cent
Japan: 61 per cent
Mexico: 46 per cent
U.K.: 64 per cent
Belgium: 62 per cent

In Canada, there was an almost equal split when respondents were asked whether they thought McCain would make a good or very good, or bad or very bad president. In total, 41 per cent of Canadians thought McCain would make a good or very good president, while 42 per cent thought he would make a bad or very bad president. By comparison, 81 per cent of Canadians thought Obama would make a good or very good president. Only eight per cent of Canadians thought Obama would make a bad or very bad president.

In total, 77 per cent of Canadians polled said their opinion of the U.S. was worse since President George Bush, a Republican, was elected in 2001. Only 13 per cent of Canadians said their opinion was better since Bush took over, following eight years under former president Bill Clinton.

When asked whether the next U.S. president should withdraw American troops from Iraq, the response was overwhelmingly in favour of a withdrawal in all countries where the question was asked.

Yes, troops should be withdrawn:

Canada: 75 per cent
France: 76 per cent
Switzerland: 88 per cent
Poland: 83 per cent
Japan: 73 per cent
Mexico: 86 per cent

No, troops should not be withdrawn:

Canada: 16 per cent
France: 13 per cent
Switzerland: 9 per cent
Poland: 11 per cent
Japan: 17 per cent
Mexico: 10 per cent

Newspapers taking part in the survey were La Presse in Canada, The Guardian in the U.K., Yomiuri Shimbun in Japan, Le Monde in France, Reforma in Mexico, Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland, Le Soir in Belgium and Le Temps in Switzerland.”

From CTV.ca“If the world could vote, Obama would steal U.S. election”

During the time I receiving the TESOL education in SFU, I am always aware of the power, literacy and motivation. So I am thinking about these questions: is there any connection among these three items and what is the relationship betwen power, literacy and motivation.

In order to answer these questions, I would like to review my previous action inquiry paper, which is written after a field work in an ESL class. I will paste part of this paper to share some thinkings about this question.

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I actually learned a lot from this teaching practice fieldwork. In a “student-centred” classroom, especially in an ESL classroom, I find that either the students coming from Asian Countries or coming from Western countries, can become the “centre” of the classroom. Even though different students have different backgrounds, different motivations and different needs, as an instructor, I learned that we can help students make use of their diverse background, and encourage their individual motivations, and use both personal experiences and self-motivation to fill their needs. I believe this teaching practice accords with that constructivism theory that helps students “personalize content in light of their language, background, culture and experience”. During these cooperative and interactive experiences, students may be more clear their self-positions and self-goals.

Additionally, I also learned that motivation is an important element of learning, which influences students’ learning processes, identities and needs. When we ask the instructor of that class to offer us a chance to teach a workshop for recognizing the students’ learning motivation, the instructor said that he never thought how to teach this before. In our workshop of “building self esteem”, I think the purpose to offer this lesson is to help students be aware of their self-motivations and get a clear goal for their future studies. In this lesson, I think every student may get their general directions for why they want to learn a second language, what they’ve already learned, and what they are going to learn. This may also help us, who are also instructors, rethink our teaching goals and teaching plan in order to adapt students’ needs.

Furthermore, according to my fieldwork, I also begin to rethink the relationship between teacher and student. Just as Pennycook (1989) has pointed out, “all eduation is political, and all knowledge is ‘interested’.” (Pennycook, 1989, p. 590). He claims that “school as a site of democracy and social change, and the significance of seeing it is that those who wish to deny the political nature of schooling are clearly articulating an ideological position in favor of the status quo.”(Pennycook, 1989, p.591). Also, Freire (1987) argues that “it is necessary to negate the political nature of pedagogy to give the superficial appearance that education serves everyone. Thus assuring that it continues to function in the interest of the dominant class. ” (Freire & Macedo, 1987, p.122). In my teaching practice, I think, it is impossible to aviod the power of politics, but at least, we can change the relationship between teacher and student. The actions we take during our teaching are varieous. We change the roll-setting desks into a circle. We ask every students to sit face to face. We also stand in the back of the classroom and ask students to introduce themselves in front of the whole class. Those practices may reduce the influence of power. On the other hand, if we want to our students get some sense of the “power relations”, I believe the as a teacher, we need more sense of that. We need always keeping our conciousness about the “power” when we are teaching. Thus, I agree that we can “negate the political nature of pedagogy to give the superficial appearance that education serves everyone”(Freire, 1987) to achieve Freire’s dream.

Additionally, I want to add the importance of using literacy. Many schools may use the textbooks and learning materials selected by teachers. However, I believe that they may ignore the power of selecting the literacy and the power from these learning contents. As a constructivism teacher, I believe it is very important to respect the students’ choice. I suggest most teachers could leave the space for students to select the learning materials by themselves, and help them get the idea of choicing good learning contents.

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