This chapter details the author's learning English as a foreign language in her home country, Turkey, followed by a critical incident that took place in a freshman composition class in the United States. The author reflects on the ways in which that pivotal experience changed her perception of self, as well as how she coped with similar occurrences throughout her teaching career. Combining World Englishes with mutuality, the author makes recommendations for dealing with negative student comments proactively.
We regularly demand of people that they suppress or deny the most effective way of situating themselves socially in the world. You may have dark skin, we tell them, but you must not sound Black. You can wear a yarmulke if it is important to you as a Jew, but lose the accent. Maybe you come from the Ukraine, but can’t you speak real English? If you didn’t sound so corn-pone, people would take you seriously. You are the best salesperson we’ve got, but must you sound so gay on the phone?
(Rosina Lippi-Green, 2012, p. 66)
A speaker who is made ashamed of his own language habits suffers a basic injury as a human being: to make anyone . . . feel . . . ashamed is as indefensible as to make him feel ashamed of the color of his skin.
(Halliday, 1968, p. 165)
TopIntroduction
As a native of Istanbul, Turkey, I was born into a middle-class family. Both architects, my parents knew the value of education and, therefore, encouraged me to acquire one, so I could have a financially independent future and a secure job. However, finding employment in Istanbul was very much contingent upon both earning a post-secondary degree and demonstrating proficiency in English. Even though Turkish was the primary language spoken both in Istanbul and nationwide, English was a thriving language due to Turkey’s endeavor to establish its membership in the European Union. The sociopolitical expansion of the English language in Turkey resulted in English being used as a foreign language, which exemplified the type of English spoken in Expanding Circle Countries (Kachru, 1985). As such, English did not have any official status and was, instead, taught as a foreign language in high schools and universities.
Entry into secondary school was selective and required all students to demonstrate competence in a foreign language, for fluency in another language was “the key to academic success and socioeconomic advancement” (Lin, 2006, p. 65) or, in Stuckey’s (1991) words, “the benchmark of opportunity” (p. 119). Understood in these ways, mastering a foreign language played an integral role in providing its speakers with symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1991), that is, a means to gaining recognition and acceptance in educational and professional contexts.
At the time, the main options were English, German, French, and Italian. Therefore, my parents retained an English language tutor to prepare me for the highly competitive high school entrance exam, as I had a very basic knowledge of English, acquired through watching British and American sitcoms from the 1980s, such as EastEnders and The Cosby Show, and, also, by listening to rock bands, such as Duran Duran and Guns N’ Roses. “Your daughter has a natural inclination towards English,” the tutor would say to my parents, a remark that confirmed the widely held belief in Turkey, that “the study of a foreign language is generally viewed as a female domain” (Bugel & Buunk, 1996, p. 16) and which also reinforced “the common perception of girls as expert language learners” (Chavez, 2001, p. xv). Yes, I loved English, not only because my tutor praised me for my performance on weekly language drills but also because, even though my English-speaking ability at the time was rudimentary, I was fascinated by the ways in which I could express my thoughts and feelings in another language. As noted by Jule (2004), “language use is a way to participate and belong” (p. 25). Indeed, I remember dreaming about studying and majoring in the language in the hope of becoming an English teacher one day.
My enthusiasm for English could perhaps be likened to TESOL scholar Kamhi-Stein’s (2013) feeling of excitement while learning English as a foreign language in Buenos Aires, evidenced by her remarks as follows:
At the age of 10, my parents took me to see the movie “The Sound of Music.” Something magical happened to me that day. When the movie ended, I left the theater dancing and singing in English, believing that I was or could become Julie Andrews even though I did not know a word of English. Right then and there I fell in love with the English language and everything the language represented. (p. 19)