Pennycook on Plagiarism

Pennycook raises a lot of issues related to the ideas of textual ownership and plagiarism. Here, in the USA, plagiarism is indeed seen as an easily defined term, which Pennycook (1996) argues is far from being the fact, especially from the point of view of people from non-Western culture. I have encountered situations, similar to the one described by Pennycook (1996, p.213) when due to power relations the works to be published had to include the 'famous' names and/or the names of supervisors. I witnessed the hypocrisy of professors when the lectures were chapters from books, and yet students were not allowed to do the same in their final papers. I read books that copied paragraphs and pages from other books (either by the same author or by different ones) and got away with it. What I found more interesting though, was the students' justifications for plagiarizing. I felt very close to some of their comments, even though Russian culture and understanding of the world is quite different from those of Hong Kong.

I agree that when learning a second (third, fourth, etc) language, the author's language may sound much more powerful than the one a language learner uses (Pennycook, 1996, p.223). Paraphrasing might obscure the meaning. I remember writing down phrases, words, sentences, and paragraphs I admired in order to improve my English (German or French). When learning a language, I do not really care about plagiarism. I learn patterns, words and phrases in context. I admit that the next step would be to use those phrases and grammar patterns in a different context, but it all starts with somebody's text. Therefore, the more you learn, the more influences you have from different authors (or maybe just few, depending on student's and teacher's preferences). In the end, once you are proficient in language, you might not even remember where you got ideas and phrases from. In Bakhtin's terms, you have appropriated them; in Western terms, you plagiarize them.

I learned English by repeating, memorizing, and appropriating. Or plagiarizing?

To quote one of the students, "Perhaps, plagiarism is a way of learning" (Pennycoook, 1996, p.225).

Pennycook, A. (1996). Borrowing others' words: Text, ownership, memory, and plagiarism. TESOL Quarterly, 30(2), 201-230.

Ivanic & Camps’ Voices

This is an interesting article, both in the way it is written and in the claims the authors make. What I liked most was that I could not completely agree or disagree with it. Very often I had to say, Yes, but… In the article, voice is defined not in terms of individuality, but rather in terms of person's associating with certain groups and communities (e.g., academic, professional). Voice is seen as not entirely unique; people "draw on the repertoire of voices they have encountered in their experience of participating in genres and discourses" (Ivanic & Camps, 2001, p.6), and the uniqueness is in how they put together these voices. It is like quilting.

I agree that our voice is in any piece of writing, whether we mean it to be there or not, whether we think about it or not, whether we have certain requirements to follow or not. However, I do not think that Ivanic & Camps (2001) provide enough evidence in support of their statement, "All writing contains "voice"" (p.3). They do have markers of ideational, interpersonal, and textual positioning that can be easily found in the Examples they present. Nevertheless, each of the examples can be interpreted in several different ways, depending on what the reader or the authors of the article find more convincing. Ivanic and Camps (2001) not only admit it (the choices can be the result of translating from L1, perceived writing requirements, assignment details, etc.), but they claim it to be insignificant – it does not matter if a writer indeed is militant regarding a certain issue or seeks membership in a certain community. What is important is that the writer is perceived as such because of the lexical and grammatical choices made in the writing. The problem I see here is that every reader will see a different voice in the same writing: what a professor reads in that writing will be different from what a researcher sees there; a monolingual speaker of English will perceive it in a different way than a native speaker of English knowing the writer's L1 or another L2 writer.

I also understand that the authors chose to present their findings in a very particular way of writing. The participants are treated as human beings, not as subjects; and the authors did that deliberately: "out of respect for them as people, we want to examine the extent of their agency in this process of subject-positioning" (Ivanic & Camps, 2001, p.6; text formatting is mine). I think this also shows the intended positioning of the authors themselves towards us, their readers: rather than displaying power by being categorical in their analysis of the data, the authors chose not to provide a variety of possible interpretations for a particular word choice. This shows respect to the readers.

Ivanic, R. & Camps, D. (2001). I am how I sound: Voice as self-representation in L2 writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10, 3 - 33.

Reflections on Connor (2008)

Having read the article, it does make sense why some linguists "refer to contrastive rhetoric as if it has been frozen at the stage of Kaplan's (1966) article" (p. 304). Most of Connor's (2008) article is about numerous things that NEED to be changed, from the definition of rhetoric and the term contrastive rhetoric to the foci of research and research methods. So, it was a little confusing where contrastive / intercultural rhetoric is at present and what is more of Connor's desire for it to be.

Nevertheless, the idea of mapping was very interesting. The interconnectedness and overlapping within and of different frameworks constituting (or influencing) contrastive / intercultural rhetoric reveals complexity and potential for developing contrastive rhetoric. I found the difference between cross-cultural and intercultural dimensions especially interesting, with the former being more abstract (on the level of notions, like politeness strategies, compared in different cultures), and the latter being more individualized (e.g., studying face-to-face encounters between people from different cultures). Cross-cultural studies are presented as valuable achievements of the past, with a cautious hint on the danger of stereotyping; while intercultural studies are seen as more contemporary, especially those focusing on writers' divergence from and / or accommodation to the language of people they interact with. I often find myself accommodating my speaking and writing in English to the language I think is expected from me by the audience. I cannot say that it is completely devoid of my personality and cultural background, but it is definitely not the same language as the one I use with my L1 interlocutors (even if the communication is in English).

Reflection on Casanave’s Chapter 1: Beliefs and Realities

This chapter reflects much of what I learned during my first year in MA / TESOL program: why I teach the way I do and how to make my teaching more effective. Casanave discusses three major areas essential for informed decision making: teaching (and learning) philosophy, knowledge of relevant issues, and awareness of context and constraints. During this year I have often been thinking, speaking, and writing about my language learning and teaching experiences (or literacy autobiography as Casanave puts it) in order to understand my underlying beliefs and assumptions about teaching English. Interestingly, I had a slightly different version each time I wrote my literacy autobiography, depending on what my focus was at that particular time. This exercise did reveal a lot about what I perceived as normal in teaching / learning and what I considered to be important.

As far as the second area is concerned, getting acquainted with the trends in teaching and the latest publications is definitely one of the requirements of graduate study. For instance, while I was teaching writing at a university in Russia, I had no idea about product or process writing, let alone post-process. Simply being aware of the existing theories and research could have made developing our own writing part of the curriculum easier and probably more efficient.

Finally, knowing about the context of teaching and the limitations I have was not actually something I learned in the US. I had been aware of that area since I started teaching. However, what I have learned is how to look at the constraints: not as the closed doors, but rather puzzles to solve. Naturally, often there cannot be perfect solutions that bridge the gap between what you would like to do as a teacher and what you actually can do. That is why I like Casanave's use of the term dilemmas instead of problems. Sometimes, all you can do is make the best of what you have, by making decisions based on all three areas. They might not be perfect, but they will make teaching (and learning) more efficient.

Casanave, C.P. (2004). Controversies in Second Language Writing: Dilemmas and Decisions in Research and Instruction. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.

 

L2 Literacy Autobiography: (Re)Discovering My Beliefs & Experiences in SLL

I grew up in the peripheral part of Russia, where the use of English outside the classroom was limited to the Internet (which became available to me only after I began studying at the university). I started learning English when I was about 7-8 years old, as an extra-curricular class. First, I learned some rhymes and English-Russian poems. Since there were no audiotapes to listen to and imitate, I had to write the English words using Russian letters so that I could memorize the poems. Then, I learned to read (and write) transcribed words along with their translation, and after that began grammar (sentence structure and grammar tenses). The classes that I had in school (grades 4 – 11) consisted mostly of reading (first, sentences; later, texts), translating, retelling / summarizing texts, and asking and answering questions based on sentence structure. We usually did not have fill-in-the-blanks or multiple-choice tests, but accuracy was the major focus. Every grammatical error was corrected (whether spoken or written). We did not learn conversational English. Most of what was spoken had to be written down first. On the contrary, in the English course that I continued attending outside school at that time, there was little emphasis on writing. Speaking – my biggest fear and challenge – was paid more attention to, and for me the progression was from producing simple questions and answers and memorizing sentences and parts of the texts to more extensive conversations and monologues. So, in my case accuracy preceded fluency and gave me sufficient confidence to actually use English.

At the university, during my first two years my English (both written and spoken) was evaluated mostly on the complexity of grammar structures and vocabulary used, as well as grammatical mistakes. The exceptions were classes taught by native speakers of English (we had a couple of Peace Corps volunteers at that time). Their teaching usually constituted some part of the course. During my third through fifth year, the focus was on writing different formats of essays (e.g., for-and-against essays and problem-solution essays) based on newspaper articles pertinent to my major (i.e. US & Canadian Studies). Essay-writing was more process-oriented, involving several stages of writing and several drafts. At the same time, the content was limited to the information in an article(s) and possible foci were discussed in class prior to writing. In fact, content was a by-product of writing. It was essay structure and logical development of ideas that were evaluated. This experience formed most of my original approach to teaching English.