How do we characterise the language situation in Jamaica?
Let us examine an extract of an interaction in a Grade 7 class:Teacher: What did I say the family is?Student 1: Miss the family is a group of people living together and caring for each otherStudent 2: Mis dis bwai tomp mi aa push di des paa mi Teacher: Last week we looked at members of the family Student 3: Yes Miss. Mother, children, father, sister, brother Teacher: Last week we looked at the roles of the father Student 4: Mii tiicha/go out an werk/ an ern di moni tu bai fuud Teacher: Now we are going to look at the roles of the mother Student 5: Mek shuor di fuud iz kuk/mek shuor shi pripier di chiljren far skuul Focus Question: How does this interaction help us to characterise the language situation in Jamaica?My conclusions: First, children enter the school system with English or Jamaican Creole (JC) or a mixture of both (students 1, 2 & 5). Buried in this statementm, is a number of controversies on which you might want to comment. One we might want to consider is whether Jamaican Creole is a language. I think we can accept that it is a language with its own consistent phonology, syntax and lexicon. It is a sociolinguistic truism that a language is a dialect with an army: designations are political, rather than strictly linguistic. In this extract note the use of the Cassidy script to convey the Jamaican language Mii tiicha. There is script that is preferable to the "eye Creole". My eye is different from your eye!The second point to note from the extract is that JC is used within the classroom. It is in fact used quite widely, broadly and freely in schools almost all the time. What is your attitude to this development and what it says about the language situation? Most of the time, our sociolinguistic discussions are about the low status of Jamaican. Do you agree that attitudes towards Jamaican have evolved? Which language has dominance? Some might say that English is the language under threat because we have embraced our language and have become careless about the value of English. Is it a resource that we should throw away?The third point is that many teachers do not use English – note the lack of verb sequencing (did/is) in the extract. Shields (1989) was one of the first to describe the 2 "englishes" that have emerged: with one group expanding as learners acquire English through schooling and thus in a mono style.Fourth, Jamaican has a range of varieties that some linguists refer to as a continuum: im a nyam im dinna/im a iit im dinna/im iiting im dinna/him is eating him dinna/he is eating his dinnerLast, a peaceful co-existence is displayed in this extract. The teacher accepts the children’s language but is this helping the students to acquire competence in English? It could be said there is no collision but is it collaboration?I look forward to your response to the questions posed and to your own conclusions from the extract or any of the related resources.Beverley Bryan School of EducationUWI
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This a very good summary of a part of what Craig referred to as TESORV i.e Teaching English To Speakers Of a Related Vernacular.
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It
It is interesting that in the extract presented all students (barring one distracted student) in the dialogue appear to be comprehending the teacher's English , even those who seem to be predominant speakers of Jamaican Creole. This scenario supports one assertion of second language acquisition theory that comprehension usually exceeds production. Easy comprehension of a Language suggests that the learner has made significant strides in learning the language and this achievement should not be taken lightly. I would be elated if I could comprehend Chinese even if I could not produce it.. Another position that could be assumed from the scenario is that possibly some students have deliberately opted to use Jamaican Creole in the classroom and that their productions are not due to any serious lack in English Language facility.This is a possibility here because the teacher is not insisting on even approximations of English. Yet another position is that children have simply figured out strategic ways of deriving meaning from English utterances.For example, in this scenario, they may simply be responding to cue words or key lexical items. Words like 'roles' and 'member's could have have been simply memorized after being learnt through a process of association with the concept 'family'. In this case, the student does not become bogged down with English structures but simply selects lexical cues to aid comprehension. This interesting scenario reflects that in the bilingual and rather fluid Jamaica language environment, our children are still able to access the content of the curriculum through the use of different strategies. Some may even ask here if bilingualism should be blamed for learning challenges. However, the scenario may suggest that at least some of our students (and teachers insist on 'many') are unable to produce the English structures. This limitation cannot be ignored within a national, as well as global context, in which English Language competence is a key determinant of success. While English is under no serious threat in Jamaica due to its status role in many contexts, Jamaican Creole is fast gaining mileage in domains previously reserved for English. Examples include its use in the media and at several formal events.
Novelette is right to note
Novelette is right to note that comprehension is greater than production in language learning. This is even more so in our Creole-speaking environment. Dennis Craig indicated 4 classes of English available to our L2 learners:English characteristics actively known; those used under stress; those known passively and those characteristics not yet known. Many students are in the third communicative category where they can respond to the pragmatic context and get by.This will work when we all get to speaking Chinese! The trouble is, as I've indicated in what I posted today, our goals are for much more (Grade 4 Literacy test) and by the time our children reach the later secondary grades it is for a very good grade in CXC and the academic and cognitive proficiency that that entails. I take the point that many children see and use Jamaican as a badge of identity- especially boys. The use of English has no resonance for them. When my family returned to Jamaica, my sons who were born in the UK, learnt Jamaican to complete fluency in 6 months. Yet , I was just reading an article yesterday about English language learning in China where Chinese cities have sponateous gatherings of learners in public spaces to practice English. Culture, history and politics are critical. Novelette's point that I would really want to focus on is how language is being used to promote learning in the extract. What seems to be happening is that students are listening for key words to trigger responses. So the English development is not at the depth that would promote critical thinking and higher order problem-solving. The teacher is holding on to her level of English with some uneasiness perhaps as children give a formatted response. It is all about the one right structure, the one right question and the one right answer. That view of knowledge-getting colours the language learning and our education system. More oral communication needs to be practised, with opportunities for structuring and re-structuring. Last point, bilingualsim cannot be blamed for our difficulties. It is the way of the world. Ruiz considers 3 orientations to the role of langauge in society: as a probelm, a right or a resource. I want to see it as resource. Bilingualism is not static and we just need to improve on what we have until there is balance- when our English is as good as our patois!
I think we can generally
I think we can generally agree that the language debate in Jamaica is often not simply about the technicalities of language, but carries deeply rooted socio-political nuances. However, it is also true that positions have 'softened' over time, and the idea that we are a bilingual society somehow seems more acceptable now than it did even a decade ago. Both languages are used fluidly in many different settings, including our classrooms. The real challenge is how to convert this 'informal' acknowledgement to policy and move our children from non-mastery of English to full bilingualism.
For me, a big problem in
For me, a big problem in moving forward would be the non-standardization of the written Jamaican and even if standardized, the our ability to read the Jamaican creole. I would imagine that if we are going to teach English as a foreign language, the student would need, for example, Jamaican to English dictionaries just like how we have spanish-english dictionaries. However, even if we had such a dictionary would our children be able to read them?