Culture and Language: Conceptualized and Problematized

Culture and Language: Conceptualized and Problematized

The five articles/chapters we read for this week all build upon last week’s blog discussion and readings regarding how to define culture. This week’s articles were, for the most part, in dialogue together in complicating any sort of perceived definition of “culture” in their attempts to situate the term within the field of TESOL:

Wintergerst & McVeigh (2011) provide necessary terminology and instruct TESOL teachers-in-training how to best instruct their students. By necessity of teaching students a second or other language, ESL instructors must take into account that their students will bring to the classroom various backgrounds and experiences that may be different from or similar to those associated or loosely connected with the language being learned. The authors rightly claim that language and culture are interrelated, and thus any discussion of second-language acquisition must take into account what culture(s) are associated with that language. Provided in this article (in addition to key terminology) are six ways in which TESOL teachers “can encourage language learners to build an awareness of culture – their own as well as that of others” (2). These include

            1) Have students articulate their own definition of culture,

            2) Raise culture to a conscious level,

            3) Point out the hidden aspects of culture,

            4) Show how cultures may value the same thing differently,

            5) Help students understand how culture works, and

            6) Build awareness about stress caused by cultural adjustment.

The authors provide scholarly justification for all of these points on a point-by-point basis, most of which is echoed in the other readings for the week. However, one point that is unique to this article is the last one regarding stress caused by cultural adjustment. This is something we’ve all experienced to at least some degree; simply by being in college we have had to go through a cultural adjustment. And, for many of us, it may have been more stressful than for others. Negotiating the differences between being a member of a high school culture, or a work culture, or any sort of other culture when entering into a new one (such as college) can create anxiety in learning different traditions, standards, lexicon, etc. An exchanges student I worked with last semester commented to me that his anxiety was lessened due to his involvement in ISU’s English Language Institute courses the summer before he began his fall semester here. Hopefully other educational institutions (such as elementary and secondary schools, workplaces, etc.) offer similar resources.

Kumaravadivelu (2010) writes this article to actively problematize perceived views of the term “culture” as fixed, static, homogenous characteristics with defined boundaries that are often based on geographical location. He reviews the history of the term, but quickly admits that the term is “elusive” and that one cultural critic (Stuart Hall, 1997) “came to the conclusion that there is not much point in trying to define culture” (9). However, he then explains that social scientists have continued to get a more concrete sense of what culture is (more on this in the optional article by Atkinson). While Kumaravadivelu hits on some of the same notes as the other authors of this week’s readings – that cultures are interrelated, have fuzzy borders (if any at all), are non-homogenous, are part of dialectical relationships between individuals, communities, and larger groups – Kumaravadivelu also introduces the term “bricolage” in relation to “cultural creativity that reuses and recombines disparate materials” (12) to describe how culture is pluralistic.  Kumaravadivelu states that

cultures thrive in part because of the connections they forge with one another…. All cultures are a result of a mishmash, borrowings, mixtures that have occurred, though at different rates, ever since the beginning of time. Because of the way it is formed, each society is multicultural…. In other words, because no culture can exist in its purest form, every culture is, willy-nilly, a hybrid culture. (12)

Kumaravadivelu chooses several words here that, if we were to compose our own definition of culture again (like we did that first week of class), I would borrow; chief among my choosings would be “bricolage,” “mishmash,” “willy-nilly,” and “hybrid.” These words, in my opinion, are common words (not necessarily scholarly) that aptly capture the essence of the elusiveness of “culture.”

Lantolf’s article in Hinkel’s text approaches Second Culture Acquisition (SCA) from a cognitive standpoint, commanding me to dig deeply through twenty years of memory to access a base knowledge from my Cognitive Psychology course as an undergrad. Lantolf is not so concerned with second-language learners learning to operate within cultures associated with that second or other language as he is with the question of someone “becoming cognitively like members of other cultures,” answering the question of, “…can adults learn to construct and see the world through culturally different eyes?” (29).

In answering this question, Lantolf examines the relationship between culture and the mind. One of the important points he brings up is one echoed in other texts for this week: Bourdieu’s (1991) concept of the habitus. Lantolf defines the habitus as “a shared body of dispositions, classificatory categories, and generative schemes that arise in collective history and is inculcated largely through the pedagogical practices of the family, which rely for their effectiveness on their thoughtlessness, nonreflectivity, and appearance of cultural neutrality” (35). Kumaravadivelu defines the term as something that “functions as a prism through which individuals see themselves and others. It conditions their words, their deeds, and their attitudes. It is at once a product of sociological forces and a creation of individual agency” (14). Lantolf quotes Bourdieu’s assertion that, once this habitus is set, it will condition all other learning (35). In other words, this habitus is the original and perhaps immovable lens through which all of our subsequent learning will be filtered. Thus, taking on full membership in another culture – as a native (whatever that means, right?) – is not attainable once one has acquired the L1 as the original conceptual structure. At best, adults can “plug in” new structures into the framework of the L1 (37). Original conceptual organizations can be modified to accommodate the C2/L2, but the conceptual organization can never reach the level of the original habitus of the C1/L1. Lantolf explains that Vygotsky’s theory of inner speech as well as Vygotsky’s work regarding sense vs. semantics parallels Bourdieu’s.

Atkinson’s article was – for me – the most direct in problematizing a definition of culture (this is the beginning of the third week of class, and we’re still defining this term. It is indeed a complex and elusive concept!). Atkinson gives a brief overview of the lack of treatment culture has garnered in the TESOL area (TESOL Quarterly publications, to be specific) from 1984 – 1998. Admittedly, we have had quite a bit of reading in this course regarding culture and its relationship to language learning; thus, I imagine his call in 1999 to address culture within the realm of TESOL has been heard and addressed. However, he makes some fabulous points that I feel are still worth attention.

Atkinson’s overriding message is that language educators should not be reductivist or static in defining culture. While Stuart Hall (1997) in Kamaravadivelu surmised that perhaps there was no point to defining culture, since the term eludes definition, Atkinson reports that Shore (1996) contends that we cannot simply refuse to define culture, nor can we ignore it. Shore is an anthropologist, and to discard the notion of culture would be to cut away a huge part of the theoretical framework upon which anthropology builds. Instead, Shore maintains, we should continue (the act must be continuous, as culture is continually evolving) “to refine the notion of culture” (Shore qtd. in Atkinson 635, my italics). I think the verb choice Shore uses – “refine” instead of “define” – warrants noting, as “refine” connotes an ongoing process while “define” suggests one that has finality.

Atkinson classifies the few articles during this time period from 1984 – 1998 as falling into three categories in terms of how “culture” is treated:

1.     Accepts a received view of culture, a view that defines culture as bounded geographically, deterministic, homogenous, static.

2.     Attempts to expand the received view but doesn’t challenge the received view quite enough.

3.     Attacks the received view of culture head-on, bringing in viewpoints that suggests perspectives such as transculturation (630, attributed to Zamel), “critical multiculturalism” (attributed to Kubota), and perceiving students as individuals rather than part of various defined cultures (attributed to Spack).

While Atkinson praises scholars such as Zamel, Kubota, and Spack for furthering the conceptual notion of culture by leaps and bounds, he claims the concept (in 1999) is still understudied in TESOL. Thus, he examines how culture is studied in social sciences and cultural studies as a guide to how the field of TESOL should proceed. Postmodernism, according to Atkinson, is responsible for most of the challenges to the perceived notion of culture in social sciences and cultural studies (and  his footnote at the bottom of 631 is perhaps the best definition of “postmodernism” I’ve come across in my 3+ years of graduate study here!). These areas of scholarship, according to Atkinson, have concluded the following:

1.     “…there is no social group that is not constantly infiltrated by outside influences” (631). In other words, groups are interconnected, interrelated, and have a high degree of hybridity. Atkinson cites three pivotal studies (although he also notes others in addition) that support this assertion: Pratt (1991), Clifford (1992), and Appadurai (1996). Appadurai’s, again, brings up the notion of bricolage that I mentioned earlier in this blog (Atkinson calls it “cultural bric-à-brac,” 633).

2.     “Just like outside influences, personal idiosyncrasy, agency, and person-internal cognitive disunity also subvert the idea of homogeneous cultures – individuals frequently act in ways that modify, resist, or ignore cultural norms” (633). In other words, not only are cultures constantly infiltrated by other cultures and influences, individuals make choices (have agency) to act and or refuse to act (resist) the norms of cultures in which they participate.

3.     “…that cultures themselves can therefore be seen as highly constructed ideologies/ideal systems meant to reduce out very real differences among people in bounded geographical areas and social groups, and to exclude both the possibility and reality of outside influence and individual differences among them” (634).

4.     Power. Atkinson states that “power is implicated in basically all sociocultural phenomena, but received views of culture(s) typically idealize such phenomena so that this fact is hidden or left out of the picture” (634). Under this point, Atkinson brings up ideas of dominant discourses, orientalism, and politics of representation.

Thus, after all of this, Atkinson arrives at his call for a “middle-ground approach to culture” (636). He mentions Bakhtin (social groups are both homogenous and heterogenous), Bourdieu, Foucault, and Giddens. This middle-ground approach, according to Atkinson, must adhere to six basic principles based on the theory he analyzes previously in his article:

1.     All humans are individuals.

2.     Individuality is also cultural.

3.     Social group membership and identity are multiple, contradictory, and dynamic.

4.     Social group membership is consequential.

5.     Methods of studying cultural knowledge and behavior are unlikely to fit a positivist paradigm.

6.     Language (learning and teaching) and culture are mutually implicated, but culture is multiple and complex.

I’m interested in delving into these principles more, since I left this article until last and these principles (and the theories behind them) require much more time than I have left in order to fully comprehend. However, Atkinson closes his article by restating his original intent of the article, which is “to present a way of looking at the vexed notion of culture ecumenically” (649, Atkinson’s italics).

One more point I want to give more than cursory attention to is the chapter by Bouton in Hinkel’s text. Bouton’s chapter regards implicatures, which I had never heard of before (and my Word spell-check is not liking). However, this term explains how conversational statements can be culturally driven (in a semantic or relative or otherwise way) to the point that the direct meanings of the words themselves in a phrase do not necessarily mean the same as the speaker’s intended meaning. Bouton sets out to determine if interpreting implicatures can be taught in ESL classrooms. His conclusion is that certain ones can be taught; that formulaic ones specifically can be taught to language learners in an ESL classroom quicker than those students can pick them up in the immersion environment. I know that ISU’s ELI addresses idioms, but I am not sure if they address implicatures. This is an area I’d like to focus more on in the future, as the exchange student I worked with last semester would often ask me what certain conversational phrases really meant.

Other important points of this week’s readings:

• ·      “Big C” culture vs. “little c” culture (in Wintergerst 9; Kumaravadivelu, 10)
• ·      Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (language shapes thought) as well as how language and culture are linked (Kumaravadivelu 18;
• ·      The National Standards for Foreign Language Education Project (1996), (Kumaravadivelu 24; Wintergerst 3)
• ·      Orientalism (Kumaravadivelu 16-17), which also leads to a discussion of power, individualism, and collectivism (Kumaravadivelu 15; Wintergerst 17) – these concepts are treated more directly in Atkinson.

What is "culture," and how is it related to language?

“Culture” is one of those words we use routinely without fully examining just what the word means. Morgan’s chapters 3 and 4 in Teaching Culture: Perspectives in Practice begin explaining the relationship between language and culture by first complicating the term “culture”. Morgan’s Chapter 3 explains how the five dimensions of culture – products, practices, persons, communities, and perspectives – are all interrelated. And, the image/metaphor of the iceberg (even though I saw a huge rock of a diamond – maybe that’s my culture of being female playing into my perspective?) serves the imagery purpose in also depicting the explicit and tacit characteristics of culture (predominantly of perspectives).

This discussion of explicit and implicit cultural characteristics helped to settle some anxiety I’ve felt with becoming a second language instructor. How do I know the relevant aspects of a student’s culture in order to effectively and sensitively make connections for that student in the classroom? Learning involves making connections between what one already knows and what one is learning. How do I know what my students already know if we have few aspects of culture in common? Morgan helped me understand (through Maureen McCarthy’s narrative) that I’m not expected to know fully my students’ culture; however, I am expected to understand the complexity of the concept of culture and that I need to find help/assistance from someone who DOES share similar cultural characteristics with my students, someone who understands those various products, practices, perspectives, communities, and persons. McCarthy explains how we are to arrive at this “emic” view when our “etic” views may not be accurately applied:

It is my opinion that in order to really get inside the emic view, an outsider needs an informant who is aware of the values and is able to articulate them, but is t is also possible to conduct research and draw from experience with he culture in order to make connections between products and practices, perspectives and values” (Morgan 30).

This idea, then, of finding an informant (whether that be a person or a text that informs), alleviates some of my anxiety regarding understanding how my students are cultured and how to best teach them.

In Chapter 4, Morgan discusses how language and culture are both inseparable (within the culture itself, one cannot separate cultural phenomenon from language) and necessarily separated (within the language classroom). Thus, the two concepts are interdependent. For example, Morgan explains that within the culture, language is ever-present and unable to be separated from the products, practices, persons, communities, and perspectives of culture. Morgan calls language “a window to the culture” (35).

Yet when studying language in the classroom, Morgan says we must separate the two, language from culture, in order to study the language. Morgan contends that language needs to be separated from culture in order to learn its linguistic features. In addition, the separation aids learning about the culture, as we need a language to use to talk about the culture. This, to me, makes sense; however, it is interesting to recall that often classroom pedagogy attempts to replicate the “real world”, to be authentic. After contending how language and culture are inseparable outside the classroom, it is a bit different to read of a proponent to separating the two inside the classroom.

Transitioning from Engl 495 to Engl 343....

Hello! I am Melinda Harrison. This is my "introduction" post for English 343. I used this blog address during the Fall 2012 semester for English 495, Second Language Writing.

This semester I am taking my tenth and eleventh ISU English graduate courses. I am a "late arriver" in the TESOL area, deciding just last semester to add coursework to obtain a TESOL certificate. I also hold an Illinois Secondary (grades 6 - 12) teaching certificate in Language Arts/English with endorsements in middle school Social Studies and high school Psychology. I taught junior and senior high school English courses for several years after earning my Bachelor's degree. I have also served as a home-bound educator for Bloomington's District 87 and a substitute teacher for ISU's University High School in addition to working on my Master's degree.

I'm looking forward to this semester's work in this course and my other TESOL course, Dr. Kang's online 344 course.

Beyond what we've discussed already....

If I were to try to name one common thread of the four pieces I read for class this week, I’d have to say it was “Beyond World Englishes.”  While we’ve read about plurality of languages – many different kinds or types of English – it seems as if this week’s readings are pushing us beyond regional or geographic pluralities to a resistance of even those abstract understandings. Each of these articles or chapters challenge and move beyond what we’ve been discussing. For example, while I felt I was being “linguistically correct” or “linguistically sensitive” in using a term such as NNES, I find that, really, we shouldn’t even be using such terms. As Mangelsdorf suggests, “Even a seemingly benign term such as ‘English Language Learners’ renders students’ other languages invisible” (124). Thus, we need to not be content with current theory and work toward moving even further (and, at the same time, challenging the pedagogical application, hoping practice will attempt to keep up with theory). Each of these articles this week challenged me to think beyond what I’d recently learned.

Mangelsdorf’s article on Spanglish struck a memory chord with me from my student-teaching days in the early nineties in Springfield, Illinois. The high school at which I completed my semester of student-teaching was described to me by town residents as the “moderately dangerous” high school in town. I was not placed in the school with the students from the west side of town (the more affluent side); nor was I placed in the “roughest” high school (the northeast side of town). Instead, I was placed in the high school with the kids on the southeast side. This school had a large number of African American students; and, for the most part, I was unfamiliar – and uncomfortable. I was a bit fearful for my safety: I was not accustomed to having to pass through and show my ID to a school resource officer. I grew up in a small, non-diverse town and my experience with a diverse population came at the U of I where I sat in class and boarded with a wide range of people of different backgrounds. But, my student teaching experience was with a slightly different population than the one at my university.  The text most problematic for me to teach was Huckleberry Finn with its commentary on slavery, civil rights, racism, etc. In each of the five American Lit class periods, I decided to ask the students how they wanted to “deal” with the word “nigger” in the text (we read the text aloud. We had to. These students were not going to read it on their own nightly, according to my supervising teacher). One class wanted to just say the word “nigger” as they read. Another wanted to substitute “n-word”. Yet another wanted to substitute “African-American”. I had to keep this all straight from class period to class period. Yet, it did strike me as odd that different classes had different ways in which they wanted to address this as we were reading.

I was reminded of this while reading Mangelsdorf’s narrative that some of the students were ashamed of Spanglish and that others embraced it as “their own” language. Some of her students felt that they should be free to use it as context dictated, while others viewed it as being a subaltern dialect to the subaltern Spanish language. Language attitudes definitely differed, and this is important to keep in mind so that we do not make decisions that rely on generalizations.

Another point that I’d like to follow up on with this article is Mangelsdorf’s connection of language dialects (Spanishes) with identity with her example of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera narrative (which I have on my reading list for the semester break). I’d like to explore this relationship among the concepts of languages, narrative, and identity.

The article I chose in the Cross-Language Relations in Composition text is “Resistance to the ‘English Only’ Movement: Implications for Two-Year College Composition” by Jody Millward. In this chapter, Millward reviews what was discussed in the first section of the book and then applies it to the unique culture of the two-year college. She states, “Clearly, two-year students evidence complex identities shaped by the intersections of class, working status, ethnicity, and language, and two-year college teachers struggle to find ways to address these complexities in their classrooms” (222). Because of this diverse culture, instructors at two-year colleges (as well as those teaching any FYC course) should, ideally, be prepared to teach multilingual composition courses (Matsuda in Millward 223). Millward proposes that community college faculty employ such concepts as full multilingualism, language shuttling, guanxi, and other concepts to guide their pedagogy.

Millward provides several concrete, practical examples of assignments community college teachers can implement in their classrooms. One that she mentions encourages students to examine their own language experiences in the form of the personal narrative (226). She also encourages four-year institutions to join with two-year colleges for research and practical application (228).

Alim discusses building language and cultural awareness with students as well. I actually e-mailed this article to my son’s high school English teacher and World Studies teacher as they are discussing the book Race: A History Beyond Black and White. Apparently, yesterday in their World Studies class the teacher shared her own experience teaching students who used a form of BL. The class also discussed lyrics of hip-hop and rap songs As this article had actual practical applications, I wondered if perhaps high school teachers could modify them for the high school level (either they’ll appreciate my sharing gesture or they’ll think I’m the batty mom telling them how to teach – either way, I was excited to share). At any rate, what Alim is doing in this article is reviewing some of the relevant theory behind language and identity connections, tensions, and classroom practices and then proposing a base of practical classroom projects – suggestions to increase instructors’ and students’ linguistic awareness. And did anyone else notice the code-meshing? See page 173, “To keep it real with our students, …”.

A challenge I see with Alim’s assertions, though, is that it is easy for him to be within – sort of – the culture he’s discussing. While his investigation is primarily emic (he’s inside the culture he’s looking at), I , for example, would have a hard time knowing what I was talking about with BL or CHHLPs.

I saved Pennycook’s article for last as it is the most complex and challenging. Hopefully I’m grasping this accurately. What I think Pennycook is challengins us to do is to move or progress further in our valuation of other languages to the point that we do not see them as being contained by regions. And, while he supports the direction proposed by opposing a “monolingual mindset,” he insists that true change will come only after we go so far as to challenge the ideological assumptions underlying those monolingual mindsets in the first place. In other words, we need to treat the illness and not just the symptoms (?). His translingual model of language commands language use to be viewed “among interlingual resources (what language resources people draw on), colingual relations (who says what to whom where) and ideolingual implications (what gets taken from what language use with what investments, ideologies, discourses and beliefs” (30.6). I’m looking forward to discussing this article further in class. I understand what Pennycook is saying (I think), but sometimes such theory is better discussed in a group (?).

Digital Literacy and L2 Learners

While I've been generally unable to critique much of the content of Hyland's SLW text, I found myself disappointed with Chapter 6, "New technologies in writing instruction." Understanding the root of my disappointment did not take long, and I do not take issue with Hyland. These "new" technologies he speaks of in this chapter are no longer "new", which is a quality inherent in technology as a whole. Very little time passes, yet technology becomes obsolete very quickly; thus, this book -- published in 2003 -- is already outdated in regards to technology. Reading this chapter did uncover a curiosity to explore more recent research in using technology to help NNES develop their English-literacy skills as well as their digital literacy skills (see Hawisher and Selfe's book chapter below).

As we know, though, practice often lags behind theory by a matter of years. Hyland mentions several technology uses that still appear familiar. One strategy is to use closed internet chatrooms to peer-edit writing and explore writing topics. I know that these chatrooms are being used in L1 high school classrooms to explore subject matter, and I think this strategy could aid L2 learners in the same way. We've discussed how L2 learners often have a difficult time with writing prompts/topics that are unfamiliar to them. Closed internet chatrooms to discuss a variety of topics, with the students pooling their knowledge and discussing with each other before they write, may be helpful.

Hyland discusses synchronous and asynchronous writing environments. I found his ideas intriguing on both, but I felt uneasy reading about real-time writing environments. Hyland asserts that "students appear to value peer support while actually composing, rather than simply receiving comments on written products" (F. Hyland, 2000). I'd like to take time (sometime...) to read this particular article. Just within my L1, I myself would feel uncomfortable composing on-the-spot with my peers reading my work in real time -- as I write. Writing is a very personal act, in my opinion, even though it is social. To me, it is this merge of private-public that I feel could make synchronous environments uncomfortable for some people. Often, we write in private and choose how and what to share to the public. I think such peer-review environments would succeed best with students who are very comfortable writing in their L2 and also comfortable with the critique of their peers. Hyland does not include this potential disadvantage in his list on page 154, Table 6.2, and I believe this is a major oversight.

Chapter 3 in Cross-Language Relations in Composition was exceptionally interesting. I've already been exposed to work by Cynthia Selfe in Dr. Ball's Multimodal Composition course (as well as work by her husband Richard). While this chapter did not discuss up-to-date technological innovations, what we do realize here is the interdependence of the English language and the culture of technology. The two scholars Hawisher and Selfe write about have digital literacies that were and are strongly influenced by their English literacy backgrounds while their English literacies were heavily shaped by their technology literacy backgrounds.

My take-away from this chapter is that the cyberspace world is constantly in flux with emerging and growing languages as well as disappearing languages, while it is influenced constantly by technological innovations, cultural values, national policy, the economy, and education. Cyberspace is never static and, surprisingly, it appears that is is also becoming less "predominantly U.S. utilized". 

The thread of guanxi ran through this chapter. At first, I was a bit unsure of a specific definition for this word. However, the authors succeeded in defining the term through illustrations of how the scholars networked and connected with others through their use of technology. This networking not only supports advancement in education and career development, it also creates space for different identities. Hawisher and Selfe state, "...young professionals like Lu are inventing their own identities thorugh their interactions with others on-line, thus making of themselves, as Sherry Turkle observes, 'multiple, distributed' identities (Turkle qtd. in Hawisher and Selfe, 64). I'm interested in exploring how digital literacies and the notion of guanxi role-play within the narratives of language/cultural immersion. In addition, I'm convinced that I now need to include some digital literacy questions in my interviews with my "writing buddy".

Bridging Research with Practicality Via Teacher-Researchers

What Hyland does with this week’s readings – both at the end of their respective texts – is provide a call-to-action to his audience, which includes L2 teachers as well as researchers. In SLW he offers a special invitation to “teacher-researchers” to view their classroom centers as research laboratories, arenas that offer up observable and measurable, collectible, relevant data that others may (definitely would) be interested in. And, instead of overwhelming teacher-researchers with a chapter that includes everything one would learn in a university research course, he touches on practical applications of relatively simple research methods and interpretation for teacher-researchers to consider. In this way, Hyland does what few others are willing to do: bridge the gap between research and application.

In his Genre text, Hyland calls L2 teacher-researchers to consider researching genres in order to assist their L2 students with writing tasks. I love how he admits that “teachers may believe they have enough to do already without adding text analysis as well, and they may even feel apprehensive at the prospect of it” (194) but then goes on to encourage teacher-researchers with the promise that they will produce informative results and will prove “a practical activity” (194). While reading this chapter, I had in the back of my mind that, this week, I was going to read critically. And so, as I did, the little question in my head kept saying, “Yes, but can we really do this with students who are struggling with learning a second language?” I thought I had Dr. Hyland here. But, of course, on page 211, he addresses this question of practicality: “But to ask L2 writers to learn genres in this way is perhaps asking a lot as they are simultaneously grappling with a second language and using that language in real contexts.”

However, in thinking of my research with my student, there is much to apply with both of these chapters, and researching/analyzing genres is a key part:

1.     “Estevan” is writing scientific research papers and must include abstracts, discussion sections, analysis, etc. I need to know what a scientific abstract looks like (the main linguistic features) so that I can show him and we can compare his with what is expected with the genre. That includes examining how his scientific abstract is a contributing voice in the social conversation of his discourse area.

2.     My own research of him as an exchange student studying for a year here at ISU requires me to figure out which data-collecting methods would work best. Right now, I’m developing interview questions, conducting a linguistic analysis of his writing, and developing my own narrative of diary information I’ve informally gathered. Hyland’s chapter gave me many practical ideas as well as encouragement.

3.     The reminder of ethical considerations is a good one. Where do we stand on an IRB for our class and what comes after if we wish to pursue these projects further?

However, I found several parts of Hyland’s chapters overwhelmed me, and I imagine that was not his intent. For example, he lost me with his explanation of corpus analysis. How important is it that I incorporate some of this in my research? Or can this be done on a much smaller scale? What if L2 teachers are intimidated by the technicalities of corpus analysis? I’m very interested in discussing these topics in class on Thursday.