Week4: Vocabulary, Phonology, Pragmatics
I was interested in how people learn while reading the section of vocabulary, how it is learned differently and how it is important for the L2 learners to learn. I myself still struggle with my limited numbers of vocabulary when speaking and writing, or listening. Thinking of learning vocabulary that I have memorized, there were many vocabularies I learned that were far off useful when it come to communicating with people, such as terminologies for medicine. It is no doubt that these terms are necessary, but language as a communication tool, what is important is to obtain the useful words for communication. Speaking of Japanese education, because of the examination in Japan, requiring the high degree of acquiring vocabularies that even native speakers sometimes do not know, Japanese students only know the meaning of the words themselves but they do not know how to use them in the real contexts. So it is sort of ironical but it is usual that people who pass Tokyo University, the most prestigious uni in Japan, can read the extremely abstract reading that even native speakers hate to read, but cannot speak anything. Oh, I am writing totally off the topic. Well, what I want to say here is that it is much more important to learn conversational words than difficult words, but I feel a bit frustrated with Japanese English education system whose goal lies in passing the examination, not in using it in the real contexts.
Regarding phonology, I found it also interesting how L1 influences how pronunciation of L2 and the fact that one's pronunciation is related to one's identity. As I was reading, I was thinking about how difficult to pronounce the word in English by Japanese speakers. As some of them are written in the textbook, we Japanese found it difficult to distinguish and make the sound of "r", "l", and "th". Although I have practiced pronunciation, it is still hard for me to pronounce them. As I was reading, the paragraph that talks about the pronunciation and one's identity attracted my eyes. When I read this, I was thinking different types of Englishs all around the world such as Konglish, Janglish, Singlish, Mangilish etc. As I thought about it, I came to think that these Englishs are only spoken by those who speak different language, and they may reflect the value of culture itself in them. In other words, the fact that people speak English differently in terms of pronunciation is because they speak different languages that carry the different culture, which means that Englishs spoken by different culture may also carry the different culture. So what i thought was it is not embarrassing to have Japanese accent but accept it and make it be part of identity. There are no pros and cons. However, as textbook says, accent serves as a marker of group membership and is used the basis for discrimination, so second language learner with high level of knowledge may be motivated to have native accent for personal and professional reasons. Sort of contradiction. But I think speaking native-like is cooler than speaking Janglish. well, I will stud pronunciation more.
My question is laid on the section of pragmatics. As I was reading, I was wondering if native speaker or people who speak fluent in English are annoyed or got angry by misuse of English or inappropriate way of using it. So my question is have you ever been annoyed or angry or any other negative thought when non native speaker of English used inappropriate English? and if so why did you feel in that way, and how should then non-native speaker be careful when speaking? Thank you!
