Final Reflection

Well, we are about to wrap up our workshop/seminar in World Englishes. This moment, the moment of finalizing our discussions and moving on with our current or future careers, represents a significant point of time to reflect on our professional development and future quest as educators, be it of TESOL or composition. To this end, in the following few lines, I would like to share the difficulties that may slow or even hinder implementing WE in the EFL curriculum in the Saudi Higher Education.

one of the difficulties that faces WE implementation in the EFL curriculum in the Saudi Higher education is the notion of standardization. This notion of standardization in the context of Saudi Arabia means that teaching being governed by rule and policies not only in what is being taught, abut also on how to teach and evaluate what is being taught. Thus, teachers do not have much agency in the curriculum design and the instructional practice. The second difficulty lies on the students' perceptions of WE and its relevance to linguistic backgrounds. That is, students in higher education often come to the classroom with at least seven years of EFL instruction in the elementary (1 year), intermediate (3 years), and high (3 years)schools where they have been socialized into the integrative skills approach dominating the Saudi schools. This might make students resist the notion of WE as it could seem unfamiliar, and hence, irrelevant approach of teaching. The third difficulty might be represents in the surrounding educational environment in higher education such as fellow instructors, mentors, course coordinator etc. who often function as pl icy keeper and, for some reason, seem not to cooperate in pedagogy transformation and, hence, seem resistant to the notion of WE in the EFL classroom. Other difficulties may include funding in case of inviting guest speakers and arranging experiential trips to interact with other WE speakers.

Despite the above mentioned difficulties, there is still room for resistance through action research, use of technology, including critical discussions in the class, and choosing topics that represent WE in the supplementary materials. I understand that these ideas will be in a form of extracurricular activities, but they will serve as valuable source for action research through which WE can be included in the higher education in Saudi Arabia.

Code Meshing: A starting point to deal with WE debate in the L2 writing classroom

While Canagrajah's notion of Code Meshing seems attractive to WE proponents and represents what it looks applicable and practical in the L2 writing classroom setting, it is still questionable to what extent this notion can be tolerated by not only the academic professionals, especially those from other disciplines (i.e. other than Education, TESOL, and applied linguistics professionals), but also WE-speaking learners who might not buy into this notion and consider it as a way to keep them where they are. The situation can be even worse when it comes to the graduate level programs as well as the publication world in disciplines such as applied sciences, medicine etc. where WE perspective is not promoted and even known.

Therefore, I really think that for the time being, code meshing would be a significant teaching strategy to achieve a safe zone for our students' learning process in writing. What this means is that code meshing should be treated as a developmental stage rather than being fully accepted and legitimized. I understand that by doing so we may reproduce, in some way, the myth of Standard English. But, it is important to acknowledge that it is still hard for WE to be tolerated especially when it comes to disciplines other than education, composition, TESOL, and applied linguistics. In sum, using code meshing in this way would be a significant starting point, at least for us as ESL/EFL or composition professionals, to find our way in teaching L2 writing within the WE debate.

Resisting Standard English Norm in Teaching WE

Well, to begin with, you can obviously tell that I build my blog’s title on that of Canagrajah’s book Resisting linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching. While WE perspective has strong arguments to justify accommodating the existing Englishes in the world, the so-called Standard English (SE) still seems to dominate education settings in IC and EC countries despite the diverse population within these countries. In the past two days in our World Englishes course, we quite frequently touched upon the issue of how to teach our EFL/ESL students within a WE perspective while the reality in our school system and the general common sense is to value SE and reject WE as the norm for teaching EFL/ESL.

I think that Canagrajah’s (1991) view about how to resist linguist imperialism in teaching English provides some insight to us, as language educator, as to how we can resist the SE norm in our EFL/ESL education system. Canagrajah (1991) argues that while English teaching has become a reality in the context of Sri Lanka, there is still a room to resist its existence but this would not happen overnight. Rather, Sri Lankan teachers should learn how deal with while at the same time slowly resist and help to transform the current situation of English. Thus, it is possible for us, as English teachers who believe in the reality of WE and its potential in EFL/ESL pedagogy, to do the same. The question then, is how we can accomplish such relative strategy within our education system. Well, I’m still not sure how to bring this idea into practice, however; I really think it is possible.

The Pluricentric Approach to Teaching English: An urgent demand

Simply put, Kachrue's pluricentric approach to English means that "there are several global centers, native and non-native, each with its own standard variety of English" (Jenkins, 2009, p. 70). This implies that English is no longer a monolithic entity, but rather, it is a pluralistic one which entails the fact that all the varieties of English entertain the same level of legitimacy in its own social context. Thus, if this is the de facto situation of English nowadays, it could be argued that it is no longer realistic to ignore the pluralistic nature of English if we are to teach EIL. The real challenge then, I strongly believe, does not rely on whether we accept this reality or not. Rather, the challenge is on how we bring this into English classroom and understand its associated practices such as teaching, testing and evaluation.

I understand Quirk's position against the idea of Englishes and how WE approach might be problematic particularly when it comes to the so-called language standards. However, if we agree with Quirk, aren't we swimming against the current and overlooking the reality of today's world? I think it is our responsibility to, at least, open our students' eyes to the existing Englishes because, if we did not, we might put our students in a situation where they either devalue the speakers of the OC or EC Englishes or feel ambivalence as to how to deal with the reality of the different Englishes which they will definitely encounter in their life.

The crux of the issue, then, is not only to investigate how to expose and teach our students the communicative skills needed to deal with English today, but also how we, as teachers, can develop our understanding to accommodate Englishes and their associated conventions, be it spoken or written, and how to transform our long held beliefs about the so-called Standard English. Therefore, I strongly believe that for my teaching context (i.e. EFL in Saudi Higher Education) the starting point will be to conduct extensive need analysis research to determine where and how WE perspective fits and implemented in the EFL curriculum.

World Englishes in the Context of Saudi Arabia: Teaching EFL within Reflection Literacy Framework

Teaching EFL in the context of Saudi Arabian Higher education is still perceived within the traditional myth of Standard American/British English. That is, the place for other varieties of English is still to be recognized and embraced in the Saudi higher education EFL curriculum. This is partly because teaching EFL in the Saudi higher education is, by and large, standardized and rule governed. That is, teachers should follow a prescribed curriculum and and teaching strategies in not only classroom instruction, but also in testing and evaluation practices which, in turn, tempt educational politicians to frame the EFL teaching within the American/British English variety for the sake of uniformity in language learning and teaching.

However, despite this strictly governed environment of teaching, there is still a room for resisting and including WE perspective in the EFL teaching within the higher education context of Saudi Arabia, namely, through designing classroom activities/tasks that contribute to raising students awareness of other Englishes. This can, also, be a first step towards transforming the common belief held by the EFL teaching policy in higher education (i.e. the belief that American/British variety is the only norm for teaching English) via conducting an action research that could help to show the educational politicians the significance of framing our EFL teaching within a WE perspective.

One framework that may have the potential to enable such resistance and change and within which WE awareness-raising activities/tasks can be designed is the Hasan's (2003) view of reflection literacy. Within reflection literacy, which entails to "create in a pupil an understanding of reading and writing [and hence language] as bearers of deep social significance" (Hasan, 2003, p. 446) I can help my students develop the critical sense needed to appreciate other varieties of English which, consequently, could serve as the bridge needed to fill the gap between the English our students learn and the different Englishes that are spoken around the world. Well, I know it is still confusing to understand how reflection literacy can be utilized in this sense. I understand that what Hasan (2003) meant is to help students function in the globalization era through helping them to achieve a deeper understanding of the role of reading and writing. Yet, it is still possible use reflection literacy to help our EFL students to build a deeper understanding of the English language role in the global and social milieu. such understanding will not only help to reify the WE concept for our EFL students, but also help our EFL students to develop the social and pragmatic skill needed to use English in a global and international setting.