Exercise 4: Understanding my social reality (maximum time: 120 minutes)

The Reality of EFL

In this paper I am going to develop a social analysis regarding the issue of English an
existing social reality. Firstly, I would mention that in 1979 Giddens stated the following: ``A
social reality is any causally efficacious system, structure, or mechanism which can exist
independently of any particular historical individual, but cannot exist independently of some group
of individuals somehow linked together in sustaining or reproducing that reality from day to day``.
As a result, English is considered as an existing social reality which pre-exists any new born into an
English-speaking society and which is causally efficacious in bringing it about, all other things
being equal, that the child ends up speaking English rather than French, German or any other
language. On a contrary, Asturian - like every other dead language - is not a social reality. In
addition to the official languages, in Spain are a number of unofficial languages. Asturian variant
is understood to an extent in the Asturias, but it is generally considered to belong to the group of
dead languages. It is not now sustained as a living language by any group of individuals, nor is it
causally efficacious in producing any new speakers of Asturian by the usual mechanisms of
language development. Asturian is simply an object of linguistic study and historical curiosity, and
it is in the interests of the inhabitants of Asturias that it should remain that way: in this case, as in
others, attempts at language "revival" are likely to be no more than scams to obtain large sums of
money from various donors. Most of our students may copy/reproduce a language from day to day
without knowing that. For example, someone may use British Sign Language without knowing or
having any knowledge that they are using it. In other situation, students may speak English,
knowing that they do so, but careless of whether their actions reproduce English in any particular
form.
In 1983, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure made the remark that any discussion of
language as a social reality will soon encounter the problem of the identity conditions for a
language. How is possible that the same thing (English language) can be different over time? Most
likely people learnt to speak ...from people ...who learnt to speak from other people who were able
to speak Anglo-Saxon. Some consequences of language change are catastrophic, in the sense of
catastrophe theory: ``despite the unbroken chain, I do not understand Anglo-Saxon. There is a
break-down of mutual intelligibility. On the other hand, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are
counted as separate languages despite a high degree of mutual interintelligibility`` (Haugen 1972).
The content of the article "What is English if not a Language?" stresses that languages are best
regarded as social facts (realities) which are not linguistic facts, developing Chomsky's distinction
between what he called external and internal languages (Chomsky 1986); it represents a distinction
between Languages (les langues) in that everyday sense in which they are considered to be social
realities and the complex facts of language (langage) as a psychological reality.

It is well-known that when people (tourists, students, business people, etc.) from all around
the world are interested in achieving success in quite simple situations, then unifying forces push
them no farther than is required than to understand what they are saying to each other. That`s the
way daily hundreads of transactions occur in which approximations to "English" are used
successfully by tourists and their hosts in achieving ordinary objectives like getting from place to
place, finding accomodation visiting turistic attractions, etc. These successful transactions horrify
linguistic purists. If English is a social reality and Asturian is not, at least in the required sense, this
means that a language can be described without invoking a social reality for it. Moreover, Katz said
that ``This is a necessary condition of the possibility of autonomous linguistics, though not a
sufficient condition, since some other kind of reality (e.g., psychological) might still have to be
invoked``(1985). Anyway, it is arguable that dead and living languages differ in majority. On one
hand in regards to a dead language, it can be entirely described by its gramma, since it has left
behind a finite and now - closed corpus. On the other hand, this can not be applied for a living
language because they are open-ended activity-sustained practices; in addition, living language are
never fully conventionalized social realities or fully determinate psychological realities. What is
sure is that there is always place for scope for individuals using 'a language' in order to create new
forms which were not already implicit in social conventions or internal psychological rules. Just to
conclude my idea I would say that language (in particular English language as a Lingua Franca) is,
for sure a social reality in case its resources are used by speakers in efforts to interact and influence
other social realities.
In 1994 Romaine stated that ``language has no existence apart from the social reality of its
users``. Sociolinguistics are those who seem to be concerned about the relationship which exists
between language and the social contexts in which it is used. As a result, in my opinion as a future
teacher of English in Romania where English language is not so often used at home, we cannot
stress enough the relevance of sociolinguistic factors in teaching English as a foreign language.
Anyway, it is no doubt that English is definitely important as a window to the world because it
represents the key to access knowledge and power. As a result of the influence of English in my
country, there are few unique aspects of the use of English in Romanian, such as the use of
loanwords, that is, items of vocabulary originating in English. To be more explicit I would go next
to describe what means by the expression ``loanwords``: ``Loanwords are words adopted by the
speakers of one language from a different language (the source language). A loanword can also be
called a borrowing. The abstract noun borrowing refers to the process of speakers adopting words
from a source language into their native language. "Loan" and "borrowing" are of course
metaphors, because there is no literal lending process. There is no transfer from one language to
another, and no "returning" words to the source language. They simply come to be used by a speech
community that speaks a different language from the one they originated in.``
Necessary borrowings Loanwords from English in Romanian - Business field: antitrust, briefing,
broker, business, cash and carry, consulting, direct marketing, establishment, internet banking, trust,
job, job full-time, part-time job, leasing, low cost, management, mass-market, promoter, PR, retail,
touroperator, team building , team, meeting, voucher, discount, salesman, leasing, show-room;

Necessary borrowings Loanwords from English in Romanian ITC field: computer, network, hard,
hardware, software, web, mouse, CD ROM, Internet, click, CD, DVD, user, panel, web-page, icon,
skin, shortcut, playlist, online, offline, spam, attachment, blog, gadgets, software, e-mail;
Necessary borrowings Loanwords from English in Romanian Fashion field: modeling, styling,
shopping, fancy, sexy, eye-liner, lip gloss, make-up artist, hair stylist, fitness, club, web club;
Necessary borrowings Loanwords from English in Romanian - Advertising field: trademark, spot,
creative director, web designer, design, banner, brand, brand awareness, brand equity.
Target group: Students from Primary and Secondary Schools (Visual Learners; Auditory
Learners; Tactile Learners; Kinesthetic Learners; Global Learners; Analytic Learners);
My role: actually, role of English Teacher Practitioner (Thesis due to June 2012); As a
future qualified Teacher of English: role as controller of everything that goes on in the classroom,
as organizer (classroom manager) of a range of activities, as assessor, as participant (cocommunicator) in an organized activity such as debate or role play and as resource (consultant,
adviser) most obviously as a language informant.
Learning styles I used: I think it is always important for teachers to teach to their students`
learning styles but this becomes crucial when teaching English language learners. Considering that
most ELLs are visual or kinethetic learners when they first learn English, when this lesson is
teached to students from primary sector, I would use the following learning styles: computer
graphics, maps, graphs, charts cartoons, posters, diagrams, graphic organizers or text with a lot of
pictures. When this lesson is teached to students from upper grades, I would choose to use an
auditory learning style.
Students`needs: to identify what skills and knowledge the learners already have regarding
English as a Foreign language; to highlight the skills, knowledge or competencies that need
developing; to identify clearly what students wish to achieve; also important is to outline and
define expectations and goals; to determine what can realistically be achieved given the available
resources; to identify any obstacles or difficulties which may arise in the classroom; to increase the
sense of ownership and involvement of the students; to make sure that the course matches student
needs and expectations at the correct level; to identify the content that best suits students needs; to
determine what is the most appropriate delivery format - class based, online or a mix of these and
other formats; to ascertain the most suitable evaluation mechanisms; and at last to outline what
results can be expected and if/how these can be measured.
The lesson is designed to examine some sociolinguistic aspects with particular reference to
the situation of Romania. The first aspect for consideration is the future of English as a Lingua
Franca (language spoken worldwide). David Crystal said that ``English is a global language
because it is a living language, it has inevitably changed in order to suit specific contexts or
needs``(1997). Quirk (1990) divides the varieties of English into two groups, the outer circle and
the expanding circle, from the point of view that the center varieties of English (i.e. English in
United States, Australia, Canada, Australia, etc.) are located in the inner circle. The outer circle
refers English as a first language in multilingual societies or English as a second language, for
example Kenyan English, Singapore English and Indian English, Nigerian English. The expanding

circle refers to English as a foreign language, such as English in Romania. In my opinion, the
international language that is used in a wide variety of international contexts is included in this
category, the expanding circle. Also, this paper will then look at the use of English in Romania with
a special emphasis on Romanian loanwords from English. (sample of them were given above).
Through this content, I hope to approach to the teaching of English in Romania Secondary Schools,
in order to inform our understanding of how each factor may affect the use of English in the future
of students.
What I want to achive:
The first thing I intend to promote the teaching of a prestigious standard (for example
British Standard);
The other thing I want to achive is to set up a common core for everyone to access and
acquire.
As Widdowson (1994) argues, ``a role for teachers of English is to teach English as a school subject
which keeps company with others on the curriculum, not as a general linguistic phenomenon. The
English to be taught in schools is, therefore, rich and full of useful resources to foster students'
potentialities.`` Moreover, it is mentioned that ``It is not educationally and linguistically realistic to
drive learners to conform to a native variety beyond their needs.`` which is totally true. In spite of
these issues, from my point of view, teachers' policy will, in any case, be to try to meet the learners'
needs, whatever they are. That`s why another role of the teachers is to consider the fact that some
learners need to, or want to, conform to a standard for various reasons, in special some particularly
purposes such as educational or occupational ones. In these cases, it will be fundamental for
educators to have competences close to a standard native model so that they can satisy the student`s
requirement. In fact teachers of EFL must play a crucial role as a best informant for English
learners.
``By better understanding how English is used at the present, we can more accurately predict
how it will be used in the future, and given a sense of what our future needs will be, we can begin
preparing to meet them (Morrow, 1987:61)``. In this paper, the first focus was to look at the present
feature and role of English in the world. The varieties of English and its changing nature will
depend very much on a number of external and internal factors: for example, students' purposes in
learning English (ESL/EFL/EIL), where they are learning the language and how interested they are
in learning about the varieties of English and changes taking place in the language. To what extent
learners need more up to date information on Standard English is debatable depending on the
context. There is a lot of influence of English, and its features have been drastically changed by the
local East-European culture. Kramsch and Sullivan stated that ``appropriate pedagogy considers
the way to prepare learners to be both global and local speakers of English and to feel at home in
both international and national cultures`` (1996). At last I would add that in order to be fair to the
students, it is very important to provide them with a kind of framework for future learning so that
they will be able to use a wide range of English varieties such as Standard English, International
English, Internet English, Regional English and continuing to make a choice counting on the
context.