I-2 OCI, LL     First Year English  for English minors (surnames A-Z, curriculum OCI or LL)
Prima annualità per gli studenti di inglese seconda lingua, cognomi A-Z, curriculum OCI oppure LL

    Module  I. “Seeing and saying things in English” (for both curricula: OCI and LL)
   Module II. “The use of local Englishes in multicultural encounters” (for OCI only)

Regulations, credits – Regolamenti, CFU> 
Assessment – Esame: contenuti e date> 
Your data – Iscrizioni, presenze. voti> 
Office hours – Ore di ricevimento> 

 <Programma e testi – Syllabus, set texts
 <Sunto delle lezioni – Recap of lessons
 <Attività di ricerca – Research tasks
 <Notizie, avvisi – News, Messages

*  NEWS
* Click on the newspaper to see the archived (old) news items

Students'  Message Board
To communicate with the other students (or with the teacher),
click on one of the orange dots:
 
 New user  ("Show me how!")   click    Old user  ("I already know how!") 
 

Want to communicate with other students or the teacher?  Use the BULLETIN BOARD above:
click on  New user  (for your first visit) and  Old user (afterwards). 
During the course, the teacher will answer specific questions on the Bulletin Board above
and will give information of general interest in the space below. 
 
 
NOTICES:

The “injustice” of the final exam: read the email of a student who contests the final exam held on June 14^th – the discussion interests everyone.

Click here

Le “ingiustizie” dell'esame finale: leggi la email di una studentessa che contesta la prova del 14-6-07. La discussione interessa tutti.

Cliccare qui.

Results of the “prova scritta” (the Final Exam with the lettori) here

Information on the Final Exam (“prova orale”) -- what to study, what kind of question, how to for the exam, when to arrive for the exam, the videos, the announcement about the nuovi corsi di laurea, etc. -- can be found by clicking here.

     

“And the winner is...”

Here are the best Ethnographic Reports (Task 2 of Module II) and the
best Internalizations of an Anglo Double (oral esonero of Module II)

 
Best Ethnographic Reports (click on the names)

                       
NOTE:
The Task consisted in spending a day at one's home as one's Anglo double, and then writing a report on everything observed and experienced during the day (see details here).  The purpose of this Task was to help students distance themselves from their Italian culture and thus be better able to enter into contact with other cultures as future intercultural mediators.
 
But the Task also was intended to help students speak English better (in the sense of learning to articulate their thoughts more like native speakers of English tend to do).  Not all students, however, agreed that this had occurred.  Some raised doubts about the usefulness of the Task for their English, doubts which I have attempted to answer at the bottom of their reports. 

Here is one such report.  Since it justifies the rationale for this Task, click on the name in blue to

 READ THIS REPORT FIRST ► Silvia Evangelista  (Marilyn Monroe, U.S. actress).
 

 
Our most junior student (she just turned 19): Silvia De Angelis (Lady Diana, Princess of Wales)
Our most senior student (worker-wife-&-mother): Roberta Scatragli (Erin Brockovich, U.S. environmental activist)
 
A typical low score paper (10 - 14/20):    Federico di Nuzzo (Martin Luther King, U.S. civil rights activist)
A typical mid-score paper (15 – 18/20):   Silvia Orecchini  (Alfred Hitchcock, British film director)

Top scores (19 or 20/20):
      Chiara Alessandrini (Bob Marley, Jamaican Rastafari),  
      Sergio Conti   (Billie Joe, a California drop-out), 
      Marco Cianci,  (Steve Irwin, Australian naturalist),  
      Federica Bartolomei (Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Speaker of the House),   
      Valentina Matrascia (Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister).  

Students who chose:
    an “ordinary Anglo speaker”, met on the Internet, instead of a famous person: Marta Guerrieri
    not a real-life novelist, but the mind of a novelist as it emerges from her novels: Fabiana Alia
 

                            NOTE: the minimum linguistic level at the end of this course – for writing and speaking – is
                            European Framework Level A2 (upper elementary: “Sa descrivere in termini semplici aspetti
                            del suo background, dell’ambiente circostante”),  The reports and interviews are therefore,
                            despite the numerous grammatical errors, far above the minimum level required.  In fact
                            they explain “un punto di vista su un argomento fornendo i pro e i contro delle varie opzioni,”
                            the required expressive competence for III year English minors (Level B2) at RomaTre.

     
Best Internalization of an Anglo Double
 

 
Oscars and Special Mentions for performances
on the Oral Exam for Module II

*Not all of the best students appear here because some of them held the mini-microphone
with their fingers over the part that picks up the sound, so their voices are hardly audible
and their video is unusable.    Next time I'll warn you to pay attention!

Click on the video cameras> 
 

 
1. Students with at least:  a B2 CEF* Level,    an ICC** rating of 4 or 5   and... a lot of flair!
 

Oscar for the
Best Double
(most convincing
“presence”)
   
Valentina Possanzini as
Jacqueline Kennedy,
ex-First Lady of the U.S.

Oscar for best
linguistic
knowledge
of double
   
Marco Cianci as
Steve Irwin,
Australian naturalist

Oscar for best
internalization
of double's
values
   
Giada D'Aleo (Level B2) as
Marilyn Monroe,
U.S. film actress

Compare with Silvia Evangelista (Level B1)

Oscar for best
interactional
capability
as double.
   
Lorenzo Carletta as
Aleister Crowley,
British writer and mystic

 
2. Special Mention:   Students with at least:  a B2 CEF* Level    and  an ICC** rating of 4 or 5
 

   
Sergio Conti as
Billie Joe, a U.S.
high school drop-out

   
Marta Guerrieri as
Rich from Birmingham,
a British college drop-out

   
Luca Valeri as
Tony Blair,
British PM (now a drop out)

   
Sabrin El Nomrosy as
Richard Nixon,
former U.S. President

 
3. Special Mention:   Students with at least:  a B1 CEF* Level    and  an ICC** rating of 3 or 4
 

   
Federica Bartolomei as
Nancy Pelosi.
U.S. political leader

   
Daniele Spinosa as
Henry Ian Cusick,
Scottish-Peruvian actor

   
 Federico Del Monte as
John Taylor Bowles,
U.S. Nazi Party leader

   
Erika Ruscitto as
Lady Diana,
Princess of Wales

 
4. Special Mention:   Students with at least:  an A2 CEF* Level    and  an ICC** rating of 3 or 4
 

1.  
2.
1. Federico di Nuzzo (B1)
2. El Gazzar Ahmed (A2)
as Martin Luther King,
U.S. civil rights activist

   
Chiara Alessandrini as
Bob Marley,
Jamaican Rasta singer

   
Claudia Sterpi as
Condoleeza Rice,
U.S. Secretary of State

   
Sergio Martin Cornicello,
an information officer
from the European Union

 
*CEF = Common European Framework of linguistic/interactive competence: A1 (min.), A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 (max.).
The exit level for the 1^st year course for English minors at Roma Tre is A2. All students were at least at that level.

**ICC = Intercultural Communicative Competence rating of the Canadian Foreign Service Institute: 1 to 5 (max.)
There is no required ICC level in the English courses at Roma Tre. Level 3 is the minimum for the business world.
 

To see the evaluation sheet that will be used to judge your Oral Performance in
speaking the language of your double (for your esonero orale on May 18^th)
click here.

Some students asked for information about the conference in Sofia that I am attending. It is organized by SIETAR-Europe – the Socieity for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research – which holds conferences for university teachers and researchers, business and government intercultural trainers, and social workers dealing with immigration and NGO's*    *in Italian, gli ONG, Organizzazioni Non-Governativi per il terzo mondo

People attend these conferences to share knowledge. You see, when you finish your University studies, there are no more “institutions” where you can learn. There are no more “teachers”. So you have to form associations in which people teach each other.

NOTE: This is what you are learning to do now, in your groups.  For example when you discuss the marks for your Tasks, you are in effect “learning from” and “teaching” your fellow students what, according to you, it means to know something about English, an English-speaking double, Intercultural understanding, and so on.

To see what I am learning (and teaching), see:
-- the web site of the SIETAR conference here,
-- the conference program here.

P.S. Intercultural trainers and consultants have also created a virtual “academy” to exchange information and research between conferences.  Visit it to see what life is like after the laurea: Delta Intercultural Academy.

_______________________________________

AFTER today, MAY 2ND, NO MORE TASKS FOR MODULE 1. IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE THE TASK, YOU LOOSE THE POINTS.

AS FOR TASK 1 FOR MODULE II, THERE WILL BE ONE (AND ONLY ONE) EXTENSION TO NEXT MONDAY (MAY 7TH).   AFTER THAT I WILL NOT ACCEPT ANY PAPERS.

_______________________________________

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  YOUR DATA*
*ENROLLMENT,  ATTENDANCE,  MARKS

Enrollment form and instructions ( in Italian)>     (Informativa privacy> )
                     You must enroll to be a frequentante and take the esoneri.  Otherwise it is unnecessary.
 
  PC HELP*: Problems using your PC?   Phone a student for help>       

If you don't have a computer, how can you enroll and follow the course?
Here are various solutions>     (Per la versione italiana cliccare qui> )
 

Students enrolled on   
 

 
Attendance 

Mod. 1     Mod. 2 

 
Photos 

 
   

Marks for Research Tasks:
 Mod. 1 
 Mod. 2 

Marks for Partial exams*:
Written + Oral> Mod. 1 
                 Oral> Mod. 2 

*Partial exams: To take the “partial exams” (esoneri), you must enroll in this course (use the form above).  But no booking is required since they are not "real"exams -- they simply reduce the study load for the final exam (for which you must book).  Each partial exam you pass eliminates one of the texts from the final exam and counts for a part of your final mark.  But only the final mark goes on your libretto.

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ASSESSMENT

Non frequentanti   Final exam contents: As a non-attender, you are responsible for all texts (book, articles) on the Reading List> 

    Criteria determining your mark >    (Studenti italiani: Leggete il testo in italiano)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frequentanti   Final exam contents: Le domande verteranno sulle discussioni in aula (non sui testi al programma) così come risultano dai RECAP OF LESSONS, dalle spiegazioni dei Tasks nella rubrica TASKS e dalle NOTIZIE, comprese le discussioni sul Bulletin Board del nostro corso a cui si accede, appunto, nella rubrica NEWS cliccando sul tasto arancione nel riquadro rosso "Students' Bulletin Board."

Also the two articles if you didn't eliminate them by taking and passing the partial exams (esoneri).

 Criteria determining your mark (out of a maximum of 30 points*):
   4 automatic points for attendance and completion of all assignments
+ total of marks received for the Research Tasks (out of 20)
+ average of marks received for the mid-term tests (out of 10)
+ mark (from -2 to +3) on the final exam (for an explanation, see here> ).
    *The sum of of all the points listed here is more than 30. This increase is meant to compensate for the fact that, in the Italian grading system, rarely do students get more than 8 out of 10 on partial tests and assignments.  Yet graduate schools and employers expect at least 25 out of 30 on undergraduate exams, and the university itself requires at least 28 out of 30 for an Honors Degree.
 
 

                                     YOUR MARKS   (I TUOI VOTI)
YOUR MARKS FOR THIS MODULE (tasks, partial exam) are in YOUR DATA : click here> 
YOUR MARKS FOR THE ESERCITAZIONI  (LETTORI EXAM, June, Sept., January) are here> 
 
 
 

                                                      EXAM DATES
     Calendar* for final exams (due appelli per ogni sessione di esame): click> 
     For last minute changes, go to the “Didattica / Notizie” page by clicking here> 

*NOTE: There are regulations governing when you can take the exam and in what order you must take each component of this course (the Module, the Exercises).  See the regulations under Regulations on the main menu or simply click here>   

 
 
   Computerized exam booking>   
No booking is required for the mid-term tests (esoneri) since they are not "real" exams (their purpose is to "exonerate" you from some of the material on the final exam) and the mark you get for them does not go on your libretto.
 
Booking is required, however, for the final exam -- and at least 8 days in advance.  Click on the orange button above to connect to the booking site, usually active 20 days before the exam period.  But before you click to book, see the “Calendar for final exams” in the paragraph above – it will help you determine for which exam to book.

 

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SYLLABUS,  SET TEXTS,  HANDOUTS 
 aaa

Syllabus 

 
Module 1: “Seeing and saying things in English”  
Module 2: “The use of local Englishes in multicultural encounters”

     In these Modules we will examine what language is "beyond words and syntax" -- a move toward a linguistics of parole alongside the traditional Saussurian linguistics of langue.  Then, on the basis of our wider definition of language, we will attempt a cultural description of "English" -- or rather, Englishes, as they exist in today's globalized yet fragmented world.

In Module I (for both OCI and LL students) we will examine language as a “will to mean” and thus a particular existential state. We will then describe the multiple varieties of English – in our globalized yet fragmented world – as a family of such states.

In Module II (for OCI students only) we will learn to use a local English in encounters with culturally diverse native speakers of that variety, as a practical application of Module 1.

Meanwhile, in your Lettori courses you will be acquiring formal competence in contemporary R.P. English – at level B1 or higher – through class and lab work.

The organizational aspects of the module -- requirements and credits, evaluation 
   criteria and so on – are indicated in the main menu.   The Reading List follows.   
 

 Set texts
("programma")

 
For Module I  (OCI + LL students; 3 credits)

1. Book: D. Crystal.1997. English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   Available at university book stores. Note: Attenders study chapters 2 and 5 for the final exam (the other chapters will be explained and tested in class); non attenders read all chapters (1 to 5) for the exam.
 
2. Monograph: P. Boylan. "Understanding others". SIETAR Deutschland Journal 10:1 (April, 2004), pp. 28-32. 
To read the text click here>    To download the text click here> . 
Note: Only the downloaded version is divided into sections. For the final exam, attenders will read sections 1-3 at home, the rest will be explained and tested during the lessons. Non-attenders will read all sections (1-10) for the exam.
 
3. Monograph  P. Boylan “Il come e il perché degli esami”
Attention: The exam will contain questions on this text!
To read the text click here>    To download the text click here> . 
Note: Although aimed at non-attenders, the text constitutes exam material for all students since it analyzes what it means to "know" English in the context of the exams for this Course.  (International students: read the English version; Italian students: read the Italian version as it discusses your particular situation in more detail).
 
 

 
 
For Module II  (only OCI students; 2 credits)

4. Book: P. Kistler & S. Konivuori (eds.), 2003, From International Exchanges to Intercultural Communication, Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä.   Thanks to permission granted by the authors, photocopies of the book may be had at Pronto Stampa, via Ostienese 461. Note: Attenders read chapters 2, 5, 9 for the final exam, the rest will be done in class; non attenders read the entire book (chapters 1 to 10) for the final exam.
 
 
5. Monograph: “P. Boylan, 'Seeing and Saying Things in English', IV annual IALIC conference, Lancaster University, 16.12.2003.” To read the text click here>    To download the text click here> . 
Note: For the final exam, attenders read only the first three sections at home (Abstract, Description of the module, Justification), since the others will be covered and tested in class; non attenders read everything.   
 

     
    NOTE for STUDENTS FROM LETTERE AND OTHER DEGREE COURSES    
Students from the corso di laurea in Lettere (and other degree courses) who need 4 credits are to study texts 1, 2, 3, 4 indicated above.  Students who need 5 credits are to study ALL 5 texts indicated above.

 

 Handouts 
 
("Dispense per i soli frequentanti -- i non frequentanti NON devono leggere questi testi.")

<cliccare                     "Learning language as culture" (in italiano)
 
Documento storico di 20 anni fa: è il Manifesto (la prima dichiarazione di principio scritto in lingua italiana) di una nuova concezione di apprendimento delle lingue vive, basata sull'introiezione culturale.
La pagina riprodotta è la Postfazione al volume Accenti sull'America di Patrick Boylan, Roma: Armando Curcio Editore, 1987, p. 387. In glottodidattica, "Learning language as culture" viene chiamato anche "l'approccio comunicativo-culturale".

 
Cultural Parameters Illustrated: How to predict communication friction.
Slides from a course by Linda Beamer, California State University, Los Angeles, 2001,
and modified by Patrick Boylan for University of Rome III students, 2002.
Warning: To see this text, your computer must have a PowerPoint Viewer (most do).  
You can get one free at www.microsoft.com  (enter “PowerPoint viewer”
in the search box or, for a direct link, click here).
 

 
Common European Framework of Reference (CEF)
You'll hear teachers at Roma Tre (and elsewhere) speak of the Common European Framework (CEF) levels of competence in a second language. For example, our university entry test is targeted for Level B1 in reading ability and A2 in speaking ability. What does this mean? Click the orange dot if you want to know more about the system (which many people criticize as simplistic, so it will probably undergo change in the near future).
 

Learn English on the Internet... FREE (no fees to teachers or schools!)
Clicking on the orange dot will open a page full of Internet sites where you can practice and extend your English. But you have to know how to distinguish what sites are most useful to you. This means asking yourself (1.) what learning English really means and thus (2.) what kinds of competence you need to acquire and only then (3.) what exercises are best for you.

     
P. Boylan. "How to interview using a questionnaire". PICTURE Project. European Commission - Directorate General for Education and Culture, Brussels, 2006. 
 
Note: To see the videos mentioned in the text, you must have a fast Internet connection (otherwise downloading the videos will take a long time).  Use one of the PC labs for students.
 
To see the videos you will also need to indicate your:
USER NAME:    PICTUREX    (in caps, or large letters)
PASSWORD:    - - - - - -     (in lower case, or small letters); you will get it during the lesson.
Non attenders: write to for a password; indicate your “matricola” and the name of this course.
 

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LESSONS:  FIRST MODULE
 

     
AFTER EACH LESSON, SEE HERE FOR THE SLIDES/NOTES USED.
 

26/02/07

Introductory Lesson: Following advice of past students, a description of course
Course web site: boylan.it (or www.boylan.it – the “www” is optional)
If not working: patrick.boylan.it (alternative site – NO “www”)

Course for: I year, 2nd language (OCI, LL)
5 credits: Lettore, plus 5 credits for OCI students: module 1 & 2 (or just 3 credits for LL students: module 1)

Conflicts in schedules:
Spanish on Monday (Prof. ???16-18)
Arab on Wednesday (Prof. Lancioni, 16-18)
Storia delle religioni on Mon., Wed. (Prof. Bonola, 16-18)
To solve these conflicts, course will end at 4:40 (you'll arrive a half hour late to the other courses.
English on Friday (Prof. Maclaren, reading, 15-17) Prof. Maclaren has already devised a work-around solution. Thank her!


There is a traditional version of this Course for non (regolarmente) frequentanti or for students who want traditional language teaching:
Monday & Friday, 12 - 2 pm Explanation of English lexico-syntax and pragmatics.

This course,from 3 to 5 pm, is the "real" course:
New vision of English, of language, of language learning.
Part of books replaced with equivalent activities (in particular a European Community Language Project).

The course will have multiple objectives:
You want to learn English. But to do that successfully, you must:
1. rethink what "English" is; rethink how to learn English;
2. rethink what it means to be a student; rethink what "learning" means, what a "course" is, what relations to establish with teachers and fellow students, what "knowledge" is, what "voti" are worth.

Next time: form groups of 6 upon arriving

Homework:  Read course web site.
                    Enrol* in the course

*In the large PC lab next to the Portineria from 16:30 to 17:
1. enter boylan.it, to to class page, click on ROLL.
2. download the file form.zip
3. extract the file form.txt
4. fill out the form
5. send it from your web email service
6. if you do not have a web email service, ask your neighbor to use hers or his.
 

28/02/07

 
Last time: Tertiary societies export knowledge. Thus L2 (second language) competence = knowing how to:
- relate to others in an L2 (more than just explaining concepts)
- share values -- theirs, then ours -- through the L2.

Values are relational, not absolute.
Examples: The general semantic fields of the words in each row below are similar.
But the real meaning depends of the culture of the speaker (i.e. the values that s/he shares with most other people in her/his community), as well as on personal choices. So we cannot understand the meaning of these words without knowing the culture and personal existential stance of whoever says them:

Tardi

Late

En retard

Pulito

Clean

Propre

Pasto

Meal

Repas

Noi

We

Nous

Ovest

West

Ouest

Note: these are VERY common words -- not complex, culturally-specific words like omertà, self-reliance, jouissance. Yet even these VERY common words cannot be really understood outside the cultural/existential context of their enunciation,.

Likewise, when observing the American students filmed during a class discussion, it is impossible to understand their way of discussing (turn taking, interruption, bid to speak, direct enunciation of concept, yet hedging and understatement, etc.) without grasping the values underlying their behavior.

So the real problem, when trying to learn “English”, is to find ways of identifying the values that give meaning to the words and behavior of one's English-speaking interlocutor.

Between speakers of different languages (and often between speakers of the same language) there is no 100% common code of values, not even a 90% common code. The following diagram, inspired from Jakobson (1982: 350-377 [1958]), can be criticized for assuming the existence of a common semantic code, a pre-defined message, an un-problematic decoding, etc. In other words, this is how computers speak to each other, but NOT humans.

Communication is rather the attempt to establish a relationship in which to work out a common code.
Language (Saussurian parole) is the particular “will to mean” in a specific context that impinges on a communicative situation through multiple means -- not just through words but also, as in the Class Discussion among American students, through silence, posture, seating arrangement, gaze, turn taking procedure, topic avoidance strategies, and so on.
Thus language (Saussurian langue) is not just “words+syntax+pragmatics” but a complex behavioral matrix (in which often words are merely accessory, the “musical background”); it is the sedimentation of repeated acts of “will to mean in a particular way” which produce a disposition to “will to mean” in that way in the future.
Thus, while a basic repertory of Anglo-derived lexis and syntax (what grammarians call “English”) is used by many different cultures, from the British isles to the Caribbean islands, each idiom is in fact a different language; in other words, we are dealing with different “Englishes”: Jamaican, Indian, Nigerian, Tok Pisin, Singlish, Irish (Hiberno-English), Australian Oz, etc.; and, in Britain, Scots, East Ender, Brummie, Geordie, etc.; in the United States, Texan, Ebonics, Brooklynese, etc. etc. etc. ). For each of these Englishes expresses a different “will to mean”.
All this leads to the following conclusion: what we call “English” is in reality not a language but a family of languages and, because of the blend of Anglo-derived and non-Anglo-derived cultures informing each variety, a métis family of idioms.

02/03/07

Cultural Differences among Students – In class

The stereotype of the White, middle-class American of Anglo descent versus the stereotype of the South-Central middle-class urbanized Italian. See here.

Learning a language – in this case, English – means acquiring a will to mean that expresses a will to be shared by some English speaking community. Thus, when we are speaking English in class, we will be acting and thinking and feeling things as we would in an American classroom (later, if time allows, we will experiment doing things in a British, Australian, Irish, Jamaican etc. way).

As for American ways of seeing and saying things, specifically in a classroom environment, here is what an American student from Trinity college has to say about:

Coming late to lessons  Chatting during lessons  
(to hear the recording, click on the words in red)

This is what YOU should think, feel and want during the lesson,
in order to speak to the teacher using his language (American English).
How can you want things that, as an Italian, you have not been taught to desire?
This will be a central, recurrent question during the course.

A language like English is therefore not simply a code (words + rules for combining them). A language can seem like a code because, from the standpoint of acoustics, people do use a set of rules for signal/message conversion; and from the standpoint of semiotics, people do use a set of signs in lexical-syntactic opposition to each other. But this is only the superficial aspect of language. If language were only a code, under normal conditions there would be no ambiguities or misunderstandings or inventiveness. Talking would be a mere bureaucratic function.

In this course we will consider the “English language” (langue) to be a particular sedimentation in the minds of the members of some Anglo community (including “elected members”, like language students who speak “naturally” enough to be accepted as a de facto member by their native-speaker interlocutors) .

That sedimentation is the product of repeated acts of willing to mean in a certain “Anglo” way (and trying to impinge on some communicative situation in that way) – even when no words are used, as in signing (= the systematic use of gestures) by deaf people or babies in some Anglo community.

Ada McGrath, the deaf woman in the film The piano, is speaking “English” to her daughter, using hand gestures + head inclination + shoulder roll + gaze + facial expressions and so on. But note that most of her gestures + ... + ... + ...+ facial expressions are NOT equivalent to any single word or grammatical construction in what grammarians call  “(verbal) English”. They are, on the other hand, Ada's attempts at making her daughter feel a specific configuration of Ada's “English” will to mean (actually her Scots English will to mean, since, in the story, she was born and raised in Glasgow).

To discover what values constitute the will to mean (when communicating) and the will to be (as a shared existential state) of a given English-speaking interlocutor, we will prepare an interview using the materials from the PICTURE Project: HOW to INTERVIEW using a questionnaire.

Homework: Do the first section in How to Interview. See the instructions under Task 0 (go to the main menu and click on RESEARCH TASKS).
 

05/03/07

 
Group discussion of the ethnographic questions that each group member proposes.
Selection of ONLY the questions that concern a SINGLE CULTURAL VALUE*
List to be consigned on Wednesday (7.2.07) with Task 0..

*Example of choice of value.

Imagine that these are your group's questions; some of the questions involve the cultural value of “individualism” (some cultures are highly individualistic – this is generally true of Germans, Americans, etc. -- while other cultures are highly collectivistic (this is generally true of the Japanese and to a much lesser degree of Italians). Again, some cultures are highly emotive (in general, Russians, Mexicans, etc.) while other cultures tend not to display emotion (Scandinavians, Britons, etc.). The questions below that seek to discover if the interviewee is individualist are this color; the questions that seek to discover if the interviewee is emotive are this color. Here are the imaginary questions:

1. Do you often eat alone? 2. Is it OK to cry in public? 3. Do you go on vacation trips in a group? 4. Should people have private health insurance or state insurance? 5. When angry, do you shout? 6. Would you like to be like John Wayne or Woody Allen? 7. Is it OK to play music loud, even if your family and neighbors hate it?

If the group chooses the value "individualism", it will make a list with questions 1, 3, 4, 7. If it chooses the value "emotivity", it will make a list with questions 2, 5, 6.

(To learn about cultural values, see Beamer in the Handouts.)

Discussion of the criteria for evaluating Task 0 (the comments on the two videos in Section 1 of How to Interview),
See the criteria here.
See the notion of British Academic English here.

Class composition:
See the statistics on “years of study of English” for this course here.
The statistics compare LL and OCI students.  Altogether, the data are:
– more than 12 years of study of English: 8%
– between 9 and 12 years: 56%
– between 5 and 8 years: 32% This will be the level at which the course is pitched.
– with fewer than 5 years: 4%

For the “genuine” lingua seconda students (the 4% above), we will organize a Tutoring Service to help them integrate into the course, do the Tasks, and learn to study autonomously in the language lab. Any student from the 8% or 56% categories (see above) can volunteer to be a tutor – some have already on their enrollment form.  Send an email to me at 

<2 tutors (standing) and their students,
  English I (2a lingua) course in 2004-05.

07/03/07

Your questionnaires, in asking what values “young white Americans of Anglo-Saxon origin” (most Trinity students) have, obviously deal with STEREOTYPES.  This is not necessarily negative: STEREOTYPES are an inevitable first approximation.

STEREOTYPES become harmful when a person keeps them and refuses to change them . It is normal for (let's say) an Eskimo who comes to Italy to say that Italian first dishes are monotonous, “Always spaghetti, always spaghetti” (because for him, at first, fusilli, fettuccine, pappardelle, lasagna, etc. are all just “spaghetti” with slightly different forms). If, after months, the Eskimo continues to say that Italian first dishes are all the same, we would conclude that he has a problem “getting into” the Italian life style: he refuses to see and feel the differences that Italians see and feel when they order their first dish in a restaurant.

And the same for an Italian who goes with the Eskimo to his home in Northern Canada: for the Eskimo there are 40 different kinds of snow, each with its own name (according to the legend, in reality perhaps only 7 to 24: see here). But for the Italian snow is just snow. At first. And it is normal that the Italian sees snow stereotypically at the beginning, for it takes time to adjust to a new environment and notice details. But if, after months, the Italian continues to see snow as the same in all its states, then he has not accepted to “get into” the Eskimo way of seeing things and saying things (the Italian will never learn the 24 different Yupik words for snow in its various states).

So, STEREOTYPES are a normal first step in getting to know any new reality.  The point is to be open to modifying one's stereotypes, as one accumulates more data.  Or rather, perhaps we should say that the point is to be open to accumulating and appreciating new data which will disprove one's initial impression, and thus to creating a new vision of the object.  Of course, the new vision will be a stereotype, too; if will be more complex and realistic than the initial stereotype, but not as complex and realistic as reality.

Thus, in practice, getting to know a person or an object from another culture means going from stereotype to stereotype, improving them continually, but never arriving at a vision with reproduces reality in all its infinite complexity.

So does this mean that stereotypes are good (useful)?  Yes, it does. -- at least,most of the time they are necessary transitory states of approximation.   But there is also a kind of stereotypes that is intrinsically negative.

STEREOTYPES are absolutely negative when they represent projections of unconscious problems that a person has in dealing with her or his own culture (or that an entire society has in dealing with its traditions). The excerpt from the film The Spanish Apartment shows an English boy who torments a German room mate for his obsessive order, when perhaps the German was simply “very orderly” (but not obsessively orderly) and the English boy, at a time in life in which he must decide what values to practice, had a problem accepting the obsessiveness for order he acquired in his British culture. In other words, he unjustly “stereotyped” the German boy as “obsessively orderly” in order to be able to say to himself: “Germans are like that, but I as a Brit am not.” This is the characteristic of all racism: the “evil” one unconsciously dislikes in oneself is projected on the disliked minority to justify treating the other persons badly.
 
 An example of a Quantitative Survey.  Read
                   The Importance of the family in Italy and in the U.S.> 
“Importance” is expressed by a certain number of parameters. Which?
 
Next task (Official Task 1): Sections 2 & 3 of How to Interview for Friday, March 9th.

09/03/07

 
The Quantitative Survey.  The Importance of the family in Italy and in the U.S., asks 12 plus one questions. The questions 1-3, 4-6, 7-9 and 10-12 revolve around four parameters for measuring family ties. (Can you identify them?)

You will use the Questionnaire at Trinity College to interview the students there on:

Monday, November 20^th, 8 pm until (probably) 10 pm
during the bi-cultural Encounter at Trinity College,
Clivio dei Publicii 7 (colle Avventino)
WE WILL MEET AT 7:48 pm (a way of saying “Be on time!”)
IN THE SQUARE BESIDE TRINITY COLLEGE, IN FRONT OF
L'ACCADEMIA DELLA DANZA, LARGO ARRIGO VII, 5

NOTE: Students who are NOT able to come to Trinity College on March 12^th must find, on their own (per conto proprio), American students in Rome to interview exactly as they would have done at Trinity College.  They can find these students during the day at American book stores, churches, etc. and, in the late afternoon (“Happy Hour”, after 5 pm) in the pubs. For a list of “lairs” where the Anglo community holes out, click here.

 Instructions: Designate the following people for each group (if you don't have 6 people, eliminate the doubles... for example, instead of two observers, nominate just one)
1. a sound technician uses audio (video) recorder
2. lead questioner asks questions
3. stenographer writes down answers
4. backup questioner asks for clarification
5. observer #1 writes down body language (parameters 2, prosody, and 4, facial signs);
6. observer #2 writes down body language (parameters 3, gestures, and 5, posture)

After "official" questions on the family, have an informal conversation in which you insert the questions from your group questionnaire. Experiment with creating empathy and moving from quantitative to qualitative questions. Do not make it obvious that your are using a questionnaire, ask questions with spontaneity.
 
 
For Monday, consign the homework that should have been turned in today: Sections 2 and 3. For instructions how to do it, see Task 1 (go to the Main Menu and click “tasks”).

NOTE: The four Sub-Goals to make your interview more interesting are, in reality, practices that help you create an empathetic bond with your interlocutor. So you should in theory aim for all four Sub-Goals.  In practice you cannot since we have not talked enough about them, in particular Sub-Goal D (Accommodating).   But during your first interview at Trinity, you can at least try.

Sub-Goal A helps you take control of the interview situation and become active, not passive, inquiring about what exactly your interlocutor means. YOU take the initiative.

Sub-Goal B helps you observe what your interlocutor says in its entirety. We have said that language is a particular will to mean that impinges on a communicative event in many different ways, and not just verbally. Sub-goal B teaches you to observe prosody, facial expressions, gaze and head movement, gestures, posture, body movement and distancing. There are, of course, many other kinds of signal that a person communicating produces.

Sub-Goal C helps you distance yourself from your own culture through “putting it on the line” (attraverso il chiamarla in causa). You can do this in many ways: one is discussing – with an American, in the present case – critical incidents in which an Italian causes a problem for an American. By accepting to listen to the criticisms of various Americans (who normally defend the American in the story) and making their criticisms yours, you can begin to see your native culture as only one possible value system.

Sub-Goal D (accommodation) helps you to see the inner world of your interlocutor by making that inner world yours when you express yourself – at first by play, then ever more seriously. We will return to the notion of accommodation later in the course.

12/03/07

Your task after asking the Official Questions: establish an empathetic rapport in which to introduce your Group Questions indirectly, adding genuinely qualitative questions to complete the list. (See my correction of your Group Questionnaire for the reasons why, in most cases, I do not consider it to contain genuinely qualitative questions.)

Your task in writing up a report on BOTH Questionnaires is to explain the setting and the questioning process, to give your conclusions, and to critique your conclusions epistemologically. For a discussion of why the “knowledge” you obtain by your questioning is NOT necessarily certain, see How to Interview, Section 3, “A word of warning:”.

This section says that
1. if you hypothesize that people in White, Protestant, upper-middle class American culture are “universalistic” (for them “Rules must be respected always and everywhere, without exceptions”) and
2. if you test 100 subjects from that population with questions like: “Do you disapprove of queue jumping, i.e. moving ahead of other people in a queue to be first?”, and they all say “yes”,
3. you still cannot say that you have discovered that your subjects are “universalistic”. In other words, you have not necessarily uncovered real knowledge.

This is because your questionnaire (as well as YOU, unconsciously) supposes three unproven hypotheses to be true. If you read the section you will see what they are and can think of ways of reducing the uncertainty of the knowledge you produce though questionnaires and even ordinary conversation.
 

14/03/07

 
In our lesson on March 9^th, I said that, to understand truly a person speaking to you in English, you have to “create an empathetic bond with your interlocutor.” And I said that part of the process of creating that bond is reducing the expressive and interpretative distance between you.   Reducing the expressive distance has been termed “accommodation” by the sociolinguist Giles.

For a description of accommodation theory, see here and here.  

Accommodation is the change in language (lexis, intonation, turn-taking rules, etc.) that you adopt when you speak, for example, with a child.  You do not imitate a pseudo-children's language, or else you sound false. You genuinely forget the time, forget adult values and relive the values you enjoyed living as a child. (I gave an example of that change of mentality on the classroom floor!) If accommodation is sincere (“substantial accommodation”), then it normally reduces the communicative distance and permits the other person to speak more freely.

Warning: In some cultures, like traditional Japanese culture, people do not want foreigners to accommodate to their way of speaking and acting. They want foreigners to remain foreigners (“in their place”). We discussed in class what to do in such cases.

If accommodation theory is true, then “learning English” means “learning how to accommodate in English” and thus how to recognize, define, assimilate and “live” the mind sets (and use the expressive repertories) that produce the different varieties of English you will encounter.
 

16/03/07

Varieties of English in the world (Crystal, English as a Global Language).

Three general categories of English: norm-providing, norm-developing and norm dependent (Kachru, 1982, 1988). These categories can be represented with concentric circles:

(language contact)    Pidgin >>> Creole >>> Language
Compare Hawaiian Pidgin English (now probably a creole) and Tok Pisin or Jamaican patois, once considered creoles but increasingly full-fledged languages and thus varieties of English, with established varieties like Indian English (also see Hinglish), Singaporean English (also see Singlish), etc.

It is not a question of learning either SBE (SouthEast British English or Standard British English, spoken by the upper classes) OR one of the marginal varieties in the norm-providing circle, OR one of the emerging varieties in the norm-developing circle.  Your task is to learn not as many varieties as you can – impossible at this stage – but rather the ethnolinguistic capabilities that will enable you to learn the varieties you will need in the future.  In a global world, you will assuredly need to accommodate to more than just SBE speakers.

In any case SBE remains the prestige norm in Britian and to some extent in continental Europe. So next week we will try to use the English of the red brick universities in England.
 
 

19/03/07

An example of Internet resources for studying:
The general characteristics of British Academic English here. (from the University of Hertfordshire)

With respect to the specific trait of “numerous explicit discourse markers”, see:
-- British Academic English: University of Warwick CELTE site,  discourse markers,  test
and compare the markers with those current in:
-- American Academic English: University of Michigan MICASE site,  markers,  test

21/03/07

Encounter with the student representatives for a discussion within the framework of the second objective of this course: to question what it means to be a university student.
For further information:

http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/rappresentanti_lci/

http://roma3linguecomunicazione.forumup.it/

Problems with correcting Task 2.

Email from Daniele (Group C) and my answer:

Hai scritto il / you wrote on (Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:39:31 +0000):

____________________________________________

> Ritengo che i voti che ho posto siano bassi a causa

> della grande confusione che si è creata tra lavoro

> individuale e di gruppo e non per incapacità dei

> componenti dello stesso. Quindi mi sono trovato in

> grande difficoltà nel mettere voti a persone che non

> avevano ben chiaro quale fosse il loro compito.

I tried to explain in class that I understand the confusion of most students since, in their schoastic and academic history, teachers have always told them what to do.

Instead, in this class, they have to ask questions (that they invent using the guidelines I furnish) and come up with answers to their own questions.

This is new and so confusion is inevitable.

So you have to judge them on the basis of:

1. factual presentation

2. epistemological honesty.

There is NO "right answer" or "official way of doing things."

I'll look your sheets over. But in the future you are going to have the same problem until students realize that THEY are responsible for the knowledge they create.

23/03/07

A sample question that could appear on the written test for the “partial exam” (esonero):

“Maria hypothesizes that people in White, Protestant, upper-middle class American culture are “universalistic” -- for them “Rules must be respected always and everywhere, without exceptions”. She wants to test 100 Trinity students for this attitude by asking them “Do you disapprove of people who jump the queue?”

If most students say yes (to this and other similar questions), has she discovered "knowledge" about the students, i.e. that their culture is “universalistic”?“

 


Evalutation of teacher using the forms from the Dean of Studies' Office.
Codes to use
Code Insegnamento LL: 20701949-1 for Lingua e Linguistica students.
Code Insegnamento OCI: 20701954-1 for Operatori Interculturali

26/03/07

Practice analysing discourse markers in British Academic English:

Sample passage. Analyze the markers like this:

Sentence 1. Marker:___NONE____ Function: This is the first sentence of the passage and introduces the paper. No discourse markers are necessary. Note that the author expresses an Anglo mentality in that s/he BEGINS by stating her/his PURPOSE (what the paper proposes to demonstrate). It would have been better if the author had also indicated her/his CONCLUSIONS . For example, s/he could have written: “This paper is an attempt to trace the development of theories of education within the Northern European Renaissance, and within Renaissance France in particular. It will show a increasing emphasis placed on the learners (or readers) of a text, made to “live” that text. My study centres...
Sentence 2. Marker:___SPECIFICALLY____ Function: “Specifically” is a marker that says that sentence 2. indicates the “focal point” or “specific point” that will be discussed in the paper. To be even more explicit, the author could have put a marker at the beginning of the sentence: “In particular...” (eliminating “specifically”).
Now that the author has told us where s/he wants to take us (sentences 1 and 2), s/he tells us in sentence 3 how her/his paper is structured (in other words, how she plans to take us there).

NOW YOU DO THE SAME WITH THE REMAINING SENTENCES:

Entire Text:

28/03/07

 
Characteristics of Anglo modes of expression

 
Sample high level modes:
the communicative intent manifests itself as
a. concrete,
b. explicit,
c. practical,
d. confrontational (but gentlemanly so: hedging, understatement),
e. eclectic...

Sample low level modes:
the communicative intent manifests itself through
a. phrasal verbs, quasi deictic definite articles – spatial concreteness
b. stress placement to “telegraph” essential information – explicitness
c. mostly baton (with few redundant iconic) gestures – practicality
d. turn taking to avoid silences & limit multiple floors – gentlemanliness
e. creativity in varying genres (new situations, fads...) – eclecticism

Codes: a. verbal, b. paraverbal, c. behavioral, d. interactional, e. discoursual...

30/03/07

Summary of MAJOR POINTS MADE DURING THIS FIRST MODULE

1. A new vision of language learning:
(you're beginning to speak like Martina!)

(And NOT like the Berlitz Language School advert. Video: “Mayday! Mayday! We are sinking!”)

2. A new vision of “English” (-►Englishes).
Thus “correctness” is relative.
SBE norms nonetheless claim universality. Even in Iraq! (video of BBC interview of insurgent group)

3. A new vision of language (a will to mean) and culture (a will to be). Example: video of a New Zealander professor and student)

4. A new vision of British Academic English (BAE). A relative norm. A way of saying things AND seeing things:: “linear”, “explicit”, “hedged”, “gentlemanly”, etc.
(Celte: Discussion on Cuba)

5. A new vision of understanding others when using English: (Picture interview.)

(video: Afterwards in a pub.)

     
LESSONS:  SECOND MODULE 
 

18/04/07

Module 2:   April 18  20  23  25  27  30   May 2  4  7  9  11  14  16  18 

Perhaps another lesson will be annulled (tesi di laurea). So we will have 8 lessons.
3 to 5? (still conflicts with other courses?)
 
TASK 4 . to send the audio(visual) files: if they are too large for an email:
http://intertransfer.interfree.it/
no limit to file size, 3 days on server

 
First module
 
Only two functions of language:
-- heuristic function (How to ask questions) – using language to “know” someone or something
-- informative or “representational” function (reports) – using language to represent something
Only one variety of English: SBE or Standard British English or South-eastern British English
Only one pronunciation of that variety: R.P. or Received Pronunciation
Only one register of that variety: BAE or British Academic English


Second module
 
Two more functions of language:
-- personal (using language to BE something)
-- interactional (using language to relate to someone)

NOTE:
7 social functions of discourse: *
heuristic > “What?”
informative (or “representational”) > “No!” (“The cat did it.”)
personal > “Here I am!”
interactional > “Hello!”
ìinstrumental > “Mine!”
regulatory > “More!”
imaginative > “Let's pretend”

*M.A.K. Halliday, Language as social semiotic - The social interpretation of language and meaning. London, 1978.

The monograph Seeing and saying things in Englsh describes langauge-learning activites that help you acquire all seven functions. (Traditional langauge teaching: mostly the informative / representational function.)

We will do activity 1 and another one, not yet determined.

Your task now is to decide:

WHO WOULD I LIKE TO BE, IN AN ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRY,
IF I COULD BE THAT PERSON FOR A DAY?
(This means that I would not only like to have the things that this person has,
but to talk, think, act, feel things like this person... at least for a day.)

Please avoid rock stars, Hollywood actors and other “artificial celebrities,” whose real “way of being” may be entirely different from the public image that their PR managers invent for them.

20-04-07

Discussion on the partial exams, in particular on the notion of qualitative and quantitative questioning. See the email to Teresa on the Bulletin Board in the NEWS section or here.

23-04-07

Halliday's 7 functions can be reduced to 3 general functions (following Karl Bühler, Sprachtheorie. Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1934)

You use language

1. to represent something (to yourself, to others) such as an idea, the description of a feeling, etc.
    and you study this function of language in your linguistics courses. These courses ask:
    “What are the formal properties of series of sounds and graphemes that produce meaning?”;

2. to do something
    and you study this function of language in your sociolinguistics and pragmatics courses.
    Pragmatics is a discipline that studies the illocutionary force of words in context (example: “The door!” meaning “Please close the door”). See J. L. Austin in How to do things with words.
    These courses ask:
    “What are the 'rules of use without which the rules of grammar are useless'?”*
    *Dell Hymes, “On communicative competence” in J. Pride & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics. Penguin, 1972 (orig 1971), p.278  

3. to BE something
    and you study this function of language in courses teaching language as culture.

To be someone in English, i.e. acquire an Anglo persona when speaking English, you must:
1. BRACKET your Italian values and ways of expressing yourself:
2. FOREGROUND the values and expressive habits of someone (your “double”) from an Anglo culture in which you would like to live for a day... as that person., thinking and feeling and wanting the things that your double thinks, feels and wants.

One way of achieving this is by using the techniques that the great Russian stage director Stanislavski invented for actors. Actors should not represent an old man, they should be an old man. Once they have found in themselves the germs of an old man's feelngs (and all of us have, within us, the germs of all cultures and all social conditions), then they can talk and act in any way they want – and it will be right for the role.

You will do the same thing in English: you will NOT try to “represent” the way an Englishman or American speaks. You will be an Englishman or American and then speak any way you want.
 

02.05.07

 
At the SIETAR Conference in Sofia (Buulgaria), April 24, 2007
the theme of Module 1 (“Understanding others”) was discussed
by Geert Hofstede, inventor the construct called “cultural dimensions”

NOTE: Important!  See the explanation of Hofstede's CULTURAL DIMENSIONS here,   There are only 5: Power distance, Individualism vs. collectivism, Masculinity vs. femininity, Uncertainty avoidance, Long vs. short term orientation.  Hofstede says he can describe the differences among all the cultures of the world using only these 5 dimensions.  If this is true, then his construct is “economical” (it gives you a lot with just a little).  One of the secondary criteria for a good scientific construct is that it should be “economical.”

NOTE: Many other social scientists have made longer lists of cultural dimensions. For example, in the “Handouts” section on this web page, you will find Prof. L. Beamer's list of 8 dimensions. To describe interaction between Mexican and United States businessmen, Garcia Sordo* gives 15 cultural dimensions.
*García Sordo, J.B. (2004). Cultural Dimensions of doing Business in Mexico: Perceptions of U.S. and Mexican Executives. Journal of International Marketing and Exporting, 9: 1.

 

Question put to Hofstede:  What do you think of qualitative versus quantitative studies?

Listen to his response here (you can read it here).
(It is also the position advocated in this course.)

NOTE: Hofstede does not use the terms “quantitative/qualitative” but rather “emic/etic”.
“ETIC” = from “Phonetic” >>> What an observer understands
“EMIC” = from “Phonemic” >>> What a participant understands
(Kenneth Pike, 1967: Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behaviour. The Hague: Mouton.)

On Internalizing an English-speaking Double

Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938) Russian stage director and theorist

(>>> Lee Strasburg, Actor's School, “The Method”: James Dean, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, etc.)

1. Don't act, BE!

2. Reconstruction of values and emotional states (reliving them by personal association – c.f, introjection)

3. “Magic If”

4. Physical action (overt behavior)

More information: Dulwich College course on the Stanislavsky system

Altri ragguagli sull'interiorizzazione come aiuto per apprendere bene Inglese: da una tesi di laurea

07.05.07

 
Practice for the oral exam on May 18^th

Sample questions on these two speakers of English, dealing with their linguistic-cultural background):

Lady Diana Frances Spenser, Princess of Wales: Interview on the BBC program Panorama, November 1995:  “The most daunting aspect was the media attention...”     “I don't want to be seen to ... be indulging in self-pity. I'm not.   I understand they have a job to do.   But...”
(Upper class South-east British English, with “Sloane” R.P. Accent)
                 Listen>  I.  II:   Read both texts>
 

Martin Luther King, Baptist minister and political activist, Nobel peace prize 1964. This sermon, “Why I am opposed to the war in Vietnam,” was delivered at the Ebenezar Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on April 16, 1967.
(Afro-American [or Black] vernacular English, also called “Ebonics”)
                 Listen>  I.  Read the text>     II. 

____________________________________________________

TOO MUCH WORK IN THIS CLASS?

HERE IS MY OPINON.

in our course, you have had to work a lot, I know.

You've had to acquire capacities that the university does not normally teach you
                  (except at the very end with the tesi di laurea, for those who make it to the end,
                             -- and even then you do not learn all of the following capacities).

These capacities are, for example:
1. how to organize a research project by yourself and carry it out (self-initiative),
2. but also how to work in a group to share information for a common project,
3. how to evaluate the others in your group and therefore, with time, yourself,
4. how to participate in group discussions, class debates (using a microphone!),
5. how to do research in English on the web and share documents electronically,
6. how to speak English to foreigners in the street, relating to them interculturally,
7. how to tutor fellow students who know English less than you (provided you joined our tutoring program – if you didn't, then you missed an opportunity to learn a precious skill);
8. how to study texts in English traditionally but also as problem solving,
9. how to adapt your English to different contexts (academic paper, interview...)
10. how to plan a Task and consign it on time (i wasn't very successful in this case, however),
11. how to act in class as you would in a different (Anglo) cultural setting (same thing).

In addition, while leaning these things, you practiced how to:
a. speak,
b. listen,
c. write, and
d. read in English
in view of the Lettori exam.

And, of course, above all you learned the CONTENT of this course:

I. that languages are not words but volitional matrices (insofar as they are langue* *see Saussure) and wills to mean (insofar as they are parole* *see Saussure);

II. that English therefore exists only as varieties, which are culturally connotated;

III. that “understanding others” in English therefore requires decentering yourself into their existential mind set, whether it be British, American, Jamaican, Indian...

I realize that learning to acquire the above eleven (11) capacities, in addition to the content and English language skills, has been a lot of work. 

So why did I insist?

BECAUSE IT IS WHAT EMPLOYERS WANT.

THEY ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH THE TWO (2) CAPACITIES TAUGHT BY TRADITIONAL LESSONS:

1. LEARNING TO TAKE NOTES AND THEN TO REPEAT THE CONCEPTS AT EXAM TIME;

2. LEARNING TO READ AND ANALYZE TEXTS AND EXPLAIN THE IDEAS AT EXAM TIME.

THESE TWO CAPACITIES WERE ENOUGH FOR MINISTERIAL BUREAUCRATS IN THE PAST.

NOT TODAY.

MINISTRIES (AS WELL AS PRIVATE SECTOR EMPLOYERS) WANT THE 11 SKILLS LISTED ABOVE.
SEE THE EVALUATION FORM FROM THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS HERE.

09.05.07

 
Commentary on the article “Seeing and saying” -- notion of constructivism.

QUESTION TO THINK ABOUT: Why are we discussing “constructivism” in an English course?”  How can a better understanding of this pedagogical current be of help to you?

Practice introjecting your double's cultural values, using the following guidelines adapted from the Dulwich College course on the Stanislavsky system.
For a copy of the Guideline Sheet used in class, click here>
 

11.05.07

 
Practice interrupting in ways acceptable to most Anglo speakers, using the following guidelines adapted from S. Sweeney, English for Business Communication, Cambridge, 1997.>
 
HOMEWORK: Do task 2 (Module II): click here.

Return to Menu 

RESEARCH TASKS

Marking Scheme

Italian school marking system:          0

1 - 3

4,  5

 6

7,  8

(9,  10)

Points for each Task completed:          0

   1

   2

 3

   4

   (5)

     
Task 0:
Due date: Monday, March 5^th

Do Section 1, “Goals”, in the on-line module "How to interview using a questionnaire". PICTURE Project. You can find the module on the CD your group leader has prepared for you or you can view it directly on the Internet, following the indications given in “Handouts” above (click here).

Your research task consists of:

-- reading Section 1 (but NOT Section 4, which is mentioned in Section 1) and also Appendix A, mentioned at the end of Section 1; if you do not understand some of the concepts, Google the words and find explanations on the Internet;

-- viewing the film clips indicated in Section1 (“Littering”) and in Appendix A (“Model Interview 2” and a scene from the film “The Spanish Apartment”);

-- writing your answers to the questions concerning the video “Littering” and the video from “The Spanish Apartment” (NOTE: There are 5 questions to answer concerning “The Spanish Apartment”);

-- inventing a few questions (5 to 10) to ask Trinity College students on March 12^th, to discover their way of seeing things and saying things in some particular domain.

For example, students last year asked about the Trinity college students' views of behavior in class (what is “right” and what is “wrong” to do). I have prepared a model questionnaire on the “family” (what constitutes a family for the Trinity students, how conditioned they are by their family). You could ask questions to discover if the American students are as open and “casual” as is generally claimed, or if they are as independent and self-reliant or as materialistic and success-driven as films portray them to be.

You can ask questions about their values, although you may get “politically correct” answers, not the truth. A better strategy is to ask about how they say things, since this is an indirect measure of their attitudes toward the theme that interests you.

Appendix A gives you lots of guidelines about making a questionnaire that is potentially valid.

IN CONCLUSION, on Monday you will bring to class:
1. a sheet of paper for the teacher, with your answers to the questions on the two videos;
2. a sheet of paper for your group, with your proposals for questions for your group's ethnographic interview.

 
GROUP LEADERS: DOWNLOAD THE EVALUATION SHEET FOR TASK 0 HERE> 
                                                    (instructions on the back)

TASK 1
Due date: March 12th.

Next task (Official Task 1): Sections 2 & 3 of How to Interview for Friday, March 9th.

This means:

Section 2: Other Options

Read Sub-Goal A, Appendix B (Nothing to write. Learn the expressions and use them in class.)

Read Sub-Goal B, Appendix C
Write the “yellow” Body Language Checklist (describing the Brit in the video in Appendix A)
NOTE: There is an error in the order of the pictures – see below*

Read Sub-Goal C
Write the answer to the two questions on the CRITICAL INCIDENT BETWEEN AN AMERICAN MAN AND A FRENCH WOMAN.

Read Sub-Goal D (don't read Appendix D for now, since you already have people to interview).
View the video “Passport Control” and
Write the answer to the 2 questions. (Don't read my answer – which follows immediately and which I forgot to cover! – until you have finished writing your answers.)

Put into practice Sub-Goal E: like learning and want to take charge of your learning!!


Section 3: Predictions
 
Write your hypotheses and predictions concerning the answers to your group questions.
Read the word of warning about the “knowledge” you obtain through your questionnaire.

*Note. There's an error in the order of the pictures in Appendix C. The correct order is:


and not:

GROUP LEADERS: DOWNLOAD THE EVALUATION SHEET FOR TASK 1 HERE> 
                                                    (instructions on the back)
but first read the “AVVERTIMENTO PER CHI CORREGGE I COMPITI” here>
This text should be read by everyone in the group.

TASK 2
Due date: March 16th.

Double interview with the students at Trinity College using:
-- a sociometric questionnaire on family ties,
-- a supposedly qualitative group questionnaire (in reality, most had quantitative questions, although during the conversation the students could introduce other, genuinely qualitative ones).
 
Criteria for writing the report of the double interviews:
 
Write your report using British academic English.

• For the lexico-syntax, the norms followed should be those of SBE (South-east British English or Standard British English) as described in, for example, Huddleston & Pullum, The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge University Press, 2002, or an equivalent.

• For the discourse characteristics of British academic English, see here. (Note: The text speaks of spoken Academic English but the six general characteristics are the same in writing as well.)

• In particular, use abundantly the explicit connectives described here.

The report should discuss:

1. the findings of your sociometric questionnaire, i.e. what you learned about the family ties of Trinity students;

2. what this kind of knowledge is worth (does it really help you understand a Trinity student's mentality, at least with respect to how you feel about the family in Italy? How? Why?);

3. the findings of your group questions, in terms of your initial hypotheses regarding the position of Trinity students (reported in Task 1) AND, most of all, in terms of “empathetic intuitions” that you had listening to your interviewees answers to your qualitative questions (if you were able to ask any).

4. what this kind of knowledge is worth (does your group's questionnaire really help you understand Trinity mentality? Do your additional questions? How? Why?);

See the Evaluation Form here for the criteria in judging a good report.

Send your report to your group leader by Saturday, March 17th. Your Group Leader should mark it and send it to me by noon on Monday, March 19^th . Sending it in earlier to your group leader, so that I can receive it earlier than Monday morning, would be appreciated.

Your Group Leader will judge your reports using the Evaluation Form available here. (The Leader will judge her/his own report, as well, but AFTER having read all of your reports.)

Finally, the Group Leader will send me the reports in electronic form, together with the evaluation sheet – to be published on the class web site – by Monday March 19^th at noon.

TASK 3
Due date: Record by March 23^rd ; Group Leader send evaluation by March 26^th.

Record a discussion on Understanding Others using British academic English.

Follow the criteria on the Group Leader's evaluation sheet here. (It works, now!)

TASK 4
Due date: April 2^nd (or, if you want, April 12^th).

How to Interview, Sections 4, 5, 6.

-- Section 4 and Appendix D -- Do NOT do them unless you want to.
See the "Lairs" here instructions for places to find Anglo speakers.

-- Section 5: Read all of Section 5. Make a qualitative questionnaire on ANY topic and translate it culturally into Italian. Interview family, friends, neighbors using an audio recorder. Make a report on the "knowledge" you got -- be critical about your "knowledge." (N.B. There is no Appendix F). Include transcriptions of a few significant exchanges. Attach the recording to your report.

-- Section 6: Read all of Section 6. Do the three kinds of practice indicated. Then conduct an qualitative interview of at least two speakers of English, one from the INNER CIRCLE (norm providing, for example an Australian or a Texan), one from the OUTER CIRCLE (norm developing, for example a Bengali or a Jamaican), using an audio recorder. Make a report on the "knowledge" you got -- be critical about your "knowledge." (N.B. There is no Appendix F). Include transcriptions of a few significant exchanges. Attach the recording to your report.

Your Group Leader will judge your reports using the Evaluation Form available here. (The Leader will judge her/his own report, as well, but AFTER having read all of your reports.)

Finally, the Group Leader will send me the reports in electronic form, together with the evaluation sheet – to be published on the class web site – by Monday April 2^nd at noon. It will also be possible to do the interviews during your Easter holiday, if you go to a place where you can meet native speakers of English. In that case give your Group Leader your reports by April 12^th, so that s/he can send them to me by April 16^th.

     
RESEARCH TASKS

MODULE II

TASK 1
Due date: May 7^th (no exceptions afterwards)

Instructions on HOW TO MAKE AN IDENTI-KIT of your English-speaking double here.

You can download the Evaluation sheet here.

Note on the Evaluation Criteria: here is what to avoid in preparing your Identi-kit:

BIOGRAPHY: Many students do not document the biography of their double very well, because they choose a famous singer or actor and have documented only her/his career. But a career doesn't tell us everything about a person. For example, if you meet an athlete at a party and want to get to know what s/he like, you don't talk only about his/her success in sports, you try to find out what made him/her be what s/he is . So if the student only knows a singer's or a film star's career or the themes s/he sings about in her/his songs, THUMBS DOWN.

CULTURE: It is not enough to document the double's psychology or personal “culture” (world view). Culture is NOT individual. It is what makes the double similar to the other people of his community, from the standpoint of values shared. For example, the singer Van Morrison has a Protestant, working-class Northern Irish culture that he escaped from by identifying with American blue grass singers but that he still carries in him. In fact, his songs are darker and more imaginative than those of American blue grass singers and this is due to his culture. So if the student only knows a singer's or a film star's personality but not his/her roots, THUMBS DOWN.

LANGUAGE: It is not enough to document a double's language by presenting texts that s/he has written. Documenting the double's language means finding a site that explains how the double's English is different from Standard British or General American. To do this the student must discover what linguistic community her/his double belongs to in REAL life. Example: when he sings, Van Morrison sounds like he speaks Southern Appalachian (Ridge and Valley) American English. But, in reality, he speaks Hiberno English (specifically, the Belfast dialect). So if the student only knows a singer's or a film star's way of singing or speaking on stage, THUMBS DOWN.

NOTE ON USING THE INTERNET TO FIND A BLOGGER TO SERVE AS YOUR DOUBLE

If you want to find blogs with videos, enter a “string” (series of indications) like this into Google:

blog Chicago college video OR clip OR film.mpg OR .wma OR .wmv OR .wav OR .mp3 OR .mov OR .asf
or
blog “Cape Town” Trekker video OR clip OR film .mpg OR .wma OR .wmv OR .wav OR .mp3 OR .mov OR .asf

The part in green is the initial part where you put keywords to find the KIND OF PERSON you would like to be. In the first examples, I looked for a blogger who uses the words Chicago and college.

In the second example, I looked for a blogger who uses the words trekker and “Cape Town” (note the quotation marks: use them when a name or a concept is composed of several words).

In the yellow part, which is constant for all my inquiries, I specify that I want to find a web site that contains a mention of ONE of the following words: video OR clip OR film
In addition the site must have one of the following types of files: “.mpg” (compressed video) OR wma (Windows media format) OR wmv (Windows movie format) etc.

YOU MUST ENTER THE WORD "OR" IN CAPITAL LETTERS, EXACTLY AS YOU SEE ABOVE.
 

     
TASK 2
Due date: May 14<sup>th

TO DOWNLOAD A .PDF VERSION OF THESE INSTRUCTIONS, TO PRINT ON YOUR PRINTER, CLICK HERE.</sup>

^{Short explanation:}

For May 14^th:
- Distance yourself from your Italian values and internalize your double's values;  then
- Live at home for one day as your double.

Write a 2 or 3-page ethnographic account of what you observed in your home through the eyes of your double.

Give it to your Group Leader by May 14^th (as a Word document sent by e-mail) so that s/he can correct it and give it to me, together with the evaluation sheet, on May 16^th, the date of our written exam.

 
Long explanation:

1. You have (in theory) already imagined 8 maxims that your character seems to say to her/himself every morning when s/he gets up, and that make her/him speak and interact the way s/he does. 

NOTE: You may want to change your maxims if you think now that they do not really permit you to think, feel and act as your double   For example, we saw in class that Caterina, whose double is Benazir Bhutto, ex Prime Minister of Pakistan (first woman!), thought she understood Benazir's cultural values.

But when I asked Caterina what they were, she said: “Democracy, equality for women, liberty.” Well, that's what Caterina believes in, too, yet Caterina has a very different way of living from that of Benazir,and very different cultural values, too. I also believe in those values, but I have a very different way of living from both Caterina's and Benazir's... and different cultural values, too.

So what are Benazir's values? How does she see, feel and act as a Pakistani woman (even if she is Westernized and “emancipated” by our standards)?  She is probably a little fatalistic, or at least she does not avoid uncertainty as much as Caterina does. And certainly not as much as I do.  So this is already one difference. What are the other cultural differences (direct versus indirect ways of speaking, living for the present versus living for the future, desire to dominate versus desire to be protected, etc. etc.)? And how does this affect her Englsih?  Does she try to speak like the upper caste in Britain? Of does she use the English of the Pakistani ruling caste?  Is it direct or “flowery”? In other words, does she accommodate to (or distance herself linguistically from) the ex-colonizer, Britain? And what about the present colonizer, America?

In class, we concluded that Caterina did not really understand Benazir.  Or rather, Caterina understood Benazir ONLY to the extent that Benazir had some of the same ideals as Caterina has (“democracy,” “equal rights,” “liberty”...).  But perhaps, because of her culture, ideology and personality, Benazir practices these ideals in ways that Caterina would NEVER do. Or at least, never as an Italian...

But, despite the differences, Caterina CAN, if she chooses, want to be like Benazir for one day!  Caterina can decide to WANT the things that Benazir wants, even if normally Caterina would never want those things. For one day. As Benazir's double.

So this is an example of what each student must do. Students must ask themselves if they really understand and appreciate (and want to live) their double's culture to the extent that it is different from theirs but nonetheless desirable (for a day, at least).

Once students have defined their double's cultural values, they must make 8 maxims. They can use the maxims they already made for Task 1 IF THEY STILL THINK THEY ARE VALID.
 
Here is an example of VALID MAXIMS. Let's imagine that you want to be, for a day, a Crocodile Dundee kind of Australian. In that case, you could choose as your maxims:

1. "Everyone's equal so I will call mio padre and mia madre, NOT “papà” and “mamma” but, instead, by their first names ("Luigi", "Pina").  I will tell dirty jokes to them (and to everyone, even a teacher or a priest)... "
Normally you would never have this crude directness as a value. But as Crocodile Dundee, you can live that value for a day.

2. "Fancy language is for lawyers and women (neither to be trusted); so just say what you want direcly.  Or just take what you want."
Same thing.

3. "Nature -- and that means dirt, too -- is good.  But civilization – armchairs, fancy clothes, bidets, ceremonies, titles, and the subjunctive (congiuntivo) – all these things are shit!"
Normally you not want to abandon hour aesthetic values as an Italian. But you CAN abandon them for a day if you choose to live as Crocodile Dundee.

This, then, is how a student could transform Crocodile Dundee's cultural values (directness, crudeness, natural functions...) into maxims.
 

2. When you have your 8 maxims that transform you into your double, write 8 more maxims that make you stop being an Italian.

Cioè, scrivere 8 massime “italianissime”, quelle che sembrano guidare il tuo comportamento da italiano e che ti fanno comunicare ed interagire "da italiano/a" con altri italiani. Solo che, a differenza della lista in inglese, dopo ogni massima, apri una parentesi e scrivi un buon motivo per criticarla, o addirittura per ripudiarla per una giornata -- cioè, una 'counter-maxim'.  Non è necessario che questa “counter maxim” sia una massima che il vostro sosia potrebbe dire, basta che sia convincente. Cioè basta che ti faccia mettere in discussione i valori che hai sempre accettato come “normali”. Comunque, se riesci a fare “counter massime” che valgono anche come massime per il tuo sosia, tanto meglio.

Ecco alcune delle tue contro-massime se tu fossi Crocodile Dundee:

Io come italiano: "Non alzare la cresta."
Io come Crocodile Dundee: "If you got it, show it"

Io come italiano:"La mamma è la mamma, le starò sempre vicina!"
Io come Crocodile Dundee: "Better on your own" (no dependence)

Io come italiano:"Anche se colto in flagrante, negare."
Io come Crocodile Dundee: "Admit your guilt, make amends."

 
3. Choose a day (Saturday or Sunday) to spend with your family as your double.  (You probably will not resist the whole day, but try as long as you can.) When you wake up in the morning, first repeat your Italian maxims: read the "positive" maxim (the one in Italian) silently and then say the counter-maxims (the ones in English) out loud to repudiate your Italian being.   If you share your bedroom with others, do it in the bathroom, to be alone!  Do this twice.

Then repeat out loud the 8 maxims that you wrote down as your double.  Do it twice.

And that's it: you're ready!   Open the bathroom door and walk out as your double. You will be him or her for the rest of the day (or as long as you resist).

REMEMBER OUR CONVENTION: You, as your double, miraculously know perfect Italian because you wanted to visit Rome so you learned it before coming. In addition, you want to see a real home in Rome so you have decided to live, not in a hotel, but in an ordinary house (the house where your Anagrafe self normally lives). Your parents have rented to you the room or bed belonging to your Anagrafe self (because your Anagrafe self has run away to England, so the bed is empty). The family treats you as their son (or daughter) who has run away. To humor them (per farli contenti), you play the roll of their son (or daughter) – but you are really your double.
 

4. During the day:

-- note everything you now see as strange in your home life.  This includes your family's ways of speaking, of interacting, and of course of making judgments.  It also includes their clothing, eating habits, home furnishings, moral precepts, whatever your family jokes about, political opinions, choice of TV programs, way of greeting (kissing?), family power structure – everything, IF you begin to see it as “strange”. If you don't see anything as strange, if everything seems normal, then you have remained your Italian self.

-- note every pressure you feel to conform to your Italian self.  Yes, that's right: your family will send you constant messages to “be normal” (= “be Italian”) – note them down. Even the way your home is organized will be a constant message to “be normal” (= “be Italian”).
Make written notes since they help you remember details better: but do this without your family noticing!! The best solution is to go periodically to your room to write down what you have observed in the preceding hour. 

-- note HOW YOUR LANGUAGE CHANGES, EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE SPEAKING ITALIAN, WHEN YOU EXPRESS YOURSELF AS YOUR DOUBLE. The words will be Italian, but the way of expressing yourself will be the way your double would speak, gesticulate, send facial messages, etc. (Also take note of the reactions of your family to your new way of expressing yourself.) This is the key part of this exercise because it shows you what English is.  English is not words (in fact, you are using Italian words).  It is the will to mean things in a particular way.

If you feel you are shocking your parents too much, stay in the background as much as possible and observe your family members more than interacting with them.  If you feel during the day that you are slipping back into your Italian persona, go to your room and read the 8 Italian counter-maxims silently and then the 16 English maxims out loud again; this should "recharge your batteries".

THAT EVENING, write your observations down as an Ethnographic Report. You must write the report as your character would have written it after spending a day with your family, to explain to a friend back home what life is like in an Italian family.  Use her/his kind of English. 

Your report should contain the following information:

a. Your Italian Maxims & Counter-Maxims plus your double's maxims
b. What you saw and heard that was "strange"
c. The pressures you felt to conform
d. The values that (b.) and (c.) represent.
e. The different way that you expressed yourself in Italian (you used perfect Italian but you should have spoken the way your double would have expressed himself or herself). In your report, give a few examples of real sentences that you said and the reactions that these sentences provoked.

Finally, draw a line like this:
                                     _____________      and

f. tornando nella tua persona italiana abituale, dopo aver scritto la parte in inglese della Relazione Finale, descrivi in italiano l'esperienza complessivamente, ciò che essa ti ha insegnato -- insomma il suo valore educativo o meno, ai fini dell'apprendimento della lingua inglese. Puoi anche rivelare se i tuoi hanno chiamato la Neuro. Il tutto, sia la parte in inglese che la parte in italiano, in due o tre pagine scritte al computer, secondo il consueto modello:

.

5. Consign your Ethnographic Report to your group leader by Monday noon (May 14th) for correction and submission on May 16^th.

Your group leader will use the following form to mark your work: click here> .

Read the form before doing the assignment so that you know what you will be marked on.

For the best Ethnographic Reports
and the best Internalization of an Anglo Double
see the NEWS section
(click NEWS on the main menu or just click here).

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