Is a Fuller Relinguification of TESOL Desirable? |

Thanks also to the contributors and to Zheng Zhang, my research assistant at The University of Western Ontario THE AUTHOR Shelley K Taylor is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education and member of the graduate faculty in French Studies at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada She is an English–French–Danish trilingual Her research focuses on multilingual children enrolled in bilingual education programs (ethnic Kurdish children in a Danish-Turkish program; minority language children in Canadian French immersion programs) REFERENCES Cummins, J (2007) Rethinking monolingual instructional strategies in multilingual classrooms Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 10(2), 221–240 López-Gopar, M E., & Caballero, J J (2007) Políticas de lenguaje: Ejemplos de Oaxaca, México (Language politics: Examples from Oaxaca, Mexico) Bilingual Basics, 9, Retrieved July 18, 2008, from http://www.tesol.org//s_tesol/ sec_issue.asp?nid=3077&iid=10029&sid=1 Munyankesha, P (2008) Lés défis du plurilinguisme officiel au Rwanda (Official multilingualism in Rwanda: Challenges and goals) Bilingual Basics, 10, Retrieved December 12, 2008, from http://www.tesol.org//s_tesol/sec_issue.asp?nid= 3077&iid=11792&sid=1 Park, H.-R (2008) (Open Source: The gateway to the Open Source community) Bilingual Basics, 10, Retrieved November 13, 2008, from http://www.tesol.org//s_tesol/sec_issue.asp?nid= 3077&iid=11109&sid=1 Taylor, S K., Smith, P., Daniel, M., & Schwarzer, D (2009, March) From “nice words” to action: TESOL/BEIS, multilingualism, and language policy that reflects member and learner needs Paper presented at the 43rd Annual TESOL Convention and Exhibit, Denver, CO, United States TESOL (n d.) TESOL’s mission, values, and vision Retrieved July 18, 2008 from http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/sec_document.asp?CID=218&DID=220 Is a Fuller Relinguification of TESOL Desirable? JOSHUA A FISHMAN Yeshiva University (Emeritus) New York, New York, United States Ⅲ I well remember the First TESOL War (TW1), in the 1950s, a “war” personified by an obvious altercation between Professors Rudy Troike and Jim Alatis, as to whether TESOL was good or bad for bilingual education SYMPOSIUM: IMAGINING MULTILINGUAL TESOL 313 It was imperfectly resolved, for the time being, at least, by the National Association for Bilingual Education’s (NABE’s) relative weakness, on the one hand, and by TESOL’s declaration that it was in favor of fostering both the mastery of English and of their other-than-English home language on the part of the pupils taught by its members Whether TESOL ever kept its promise or even made a promise in the latter connection (or whether it was merely a tactical concession to begin with) has never been formally or fully evaluated A question now arises as to whether a Second TESOL War (TW2) is or will be required, a civil war in this case, in order to satisfy the unmet aspirations of some of the members of its special interest groups (teachers of Spanish, teachers of Japanese, teachers of speakers of other than English home or world languages) as to whether their concerns can better be addressed by TESOL than were the concerns of their NABE counterparts some half a century ago The exact nature of the interest-section goals of teachers of languages other than English within TESOL need to be explored and opened to public debate, both pro and The session we are about to undertake may be considered a preemptive strike on behalf of a peaceful but a more genuine solution to the “other” language concerns of TESOL members who are also teachers of languages other than English A few of these concerns and some recommendations concerning their possible amelioration will be briefly sketched here as examples of problems and possibilities in this connection The differences between Rudy Troike and Jim Alatis were both internal and external Jim was like an ebullient olive-and-wine merchant, ever cheerful, chatty, on the go, and full of a not fully disguised certainty of Greek cultural superiority, masquerading as urbaneness Rudy was tall, dour, and quiet and with an intensity of someone who wouldn’t stand for injustice or for time to be wasted in correcting it Seldom have two more different individuals led two more different organizations: TESOL and the National Association for Bilingual Education I became acquainted with both of them very early in my and their careers In 1968, from my new base of operations at the Greenfield Center for Human Relations, at the University of Pennsylvania, after a 10-year hiatus in New York, I began badgering U.S senators and representatives, as well as spokespersons for language-related associations, concerning the forthcoming Census of 1970 I stressed that our country had virtually no information about its non-English language resources-in-use, information that could well be vital for its own commercial, diplomatic, and cultural roles both at home and abroad Unbeknownst to me, my correspondence and urgings were passed along to a government civil servant, Bruce Gaarder (a slow-speaking Texan) He called me one day and invited me to come to his office in Washington, if I were interested in undertaking myself the kinds of data collection that I wanted the government to render possible There, in Gaarder’s office, I was introduced to, among others, Gaarder’s 314 TESOL QUARTERLY young assistant, Jim Alatis, who immediately told me that he knew what my proposed project was all about (“counting speakers, schools, newspapers, radio-TV programs, houses of worship”), because, being Greek he knew all about the importance of such things “We’ve got our culture to maintain, you know,” he added I did know, because my own cultural heritage, while not exactly worn on my sleeve, was too salient in my awareness not to come to fore almost everywhere and all the time It was not much later that I met Rudy, and I think that was thanks to Bruce Gaarder as well Out of the blue, I received an invitation to address the Texas Educators Association on “Bilingualism and Intelligence.” My remarks at the time were not as noteworthy to me—they can be located in the published record somewhere—as were those of an unknown, lanky, and drawling young University of Texas faculty member with the odd name of Troike, who spoke on “The Benefits of Spanish Bilingualism” for all of Texas’s varied populations, Anglo and Chicano My remarks, coming as they did from an outsider, a Northerner and a Jew, ruffled the audience’s feathers and received an incredulous but muted reception, but those by the other speaker, someone who was presumably a native son and should have known better, simply infuriated them He did not urge greater understanding, appreciation, or recognition of a drowntrodden and largely exploited and disenfranchised minority but essentially accepted the Mexicans in Texas as role models living in touch with two great languages and great traditions That was Rudy, in his speakingtruth-to-power role It didn’t bring him many accolades, because he was completely without political savvy, guile, or self-serving intent in its performance, but it did give him a lot of satisfaction over the years Fast-forward about two decades and the dramatis personae of our little morality tale have all reached a certain level of national and international recognition My Language Loyalty in the United States (Fishman, 1966) had received quite a bit of recognition in the United States and in Europe and had even gotten to be cited in connection with “the ethnic revival” and other such self-understanding efforts Even American mainstream selfunderstanding efforts (such as those conducted by the American Studies Association folks) invited me to speak about it and, on one occasion, I was likened to a “Christopher Columbus of Internal America.” Jim Alatis had become a power-for-life at TESOL, in whose founding and promotion he had played such an outstanding role Rudolph Troike had become a major advocate of bilingual education in the United States and an early (perhaps the very first?) director of NABE From the very outset, TESOL was infinitely stronger (better funded), attracted a more varied set of supporters, and offered a greater variety of membership services than did NABE A career in English could easily be much more of a career than could a career in bilingual education This would have merely been a sad but undeniable and unremarkable truth of American language organization SYMPOSIUM: IMAGINING MULTILINGUAL TESOL 315 life had not David attacked Goliath, doing so in the full glare of public attention Rudy attacked TESOL as being bad for bilingual education, both organizationally and professionally Alatis gallantly rose to TESOL’s defense, but Rudy would not be so easily mollified, and TW1, though brief (something like the United States attacking Grenada), was off to a breathless start As in too much of human history, Goliath won TESOL loudly claimed that it supported bilingual education and quickly “proved” that it wished it well by adding a bilingual education interest section to its table of organization and expanding its already gigantic annual program to include a few sessions on bilingual education–related topics as well These tweakings did not really redress Troike’s original bill of grievances, but both sides went through a reconciliation handshake Troike, thereupon, retired to lick his wounds and matters quickly returned to the statusquo-antum where they have remained ever since Now the question arises (and, indeed, has been raised by Shelley and others) as to whether there will be TW2 Giants like Troike and Alatis no longer roam the earth, and NABE is now merely a shadow of its former already shadowlike self However, within the interest sections that pertain to teachers of languages other than English (French, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, etc., etc.) faint rumblings of the “ghost of Troike” are stirring Is TESOL capable of doing more on behalf of languages other than English? If so, then of what might this “more” consist? Would merely having more programs in the very non-English languages to which their practitioners are devoted be mere tokenism? Would the championing of out-of-classroom experiences for the students of such languages be permissible within TESOL’s guidelines, or would a separate organization in order to really provide such experiences (rather than merely to discuss such experiences) be necessary in order to keep these speakers from moving headlong toward the anglification that has overtaken the rest of TESOL? Does the newly founded organization of heritage language speakers need to be rescued from moving rapidly the way of NABE, toward marginalization? Could TESOL be of any help in the later connection? Would a tripartite (or multipartite) combination of all of them into an Association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other American Languages (ATESOAL) be possible, advisable of both educational as well as morethan-educational outcomes in connection with them? English has so much more going for it (even merely from the point of view of facilitating student learning, use, and retention) than only the teachers’ competence and the public classroom’s curriculum, authority, and budget, that we are encouraged by TESOL to overlook the degree to which we all pretend that a language is a hothouse plant that can be provided for by more effective means of teaching conjugations Will a TW3 be necessary before TESOL realizes that as “the big kid on the block” it has a responsibility that goes far beyond its current reach or aspiration? Alatis and Troike, what say you? 316 TESOL QUARTERLY THE AUTHOR Joshua A Fishman is a sociolinguistic researcher, teacher, lecturer, and author In addition to his many well-known journal and book publications, he is the recipient of an honorary DHL from the Free University of Brussels, the Premi Institut Linguapax (Barcelona), and a multivolume festschrift presented by colleagues and students in honor of his 80th birthday An annual prize in his name has just been announced by the National Association for Heritage Languages of the USA and will be awarded for the first time in 2009 REFERENCE Fishman, J A (1966) Language loyalty in the United States: The maintenance and perpetuation of non-English mother tongues by American ethnic and religious groups The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton Multilingualism in the English-language Classroom: Pedagogical Considerations JIM CUMMINS University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada Ⅲ This article addresses the issue of whether TESOL should clearly articulate a set of pedagogical principles that challenge the assumption that English language teaching (ELT) should be conducted monolingually through English This monolingual principle (Howatt, 1984) emphasizes instructional use of the target language (TL) to the exclusion of students’ home language (L1), with the goal of enabling learners to think in the TL with minimal interference from the L1 The monolingual principle initially gained widespread acceptance more than 100 years ago in the context of the direct method and has continued to exert a strong influence on various language teaching approaches since that time (Yu, 2000) There are strong empirical and theoretical reasons to challenge the monolingual principle and articulate a set of bilingual instructional strategies that more adequately address the challenges of English language and academic development The focus is on school contexts rather than on the teaching of English to adults, but similar arguments are equally relevant in many adult learning contexts (e.g., Auerbach, 1993) SYMPOSIUM: IMAGINING MULTILINGUAL TESOL 317