Belle Sobolewski
16 February 2016
LANG 474, Prof. Lee
Background Profile
Krakatoa was born in 1995 in the city of Lahore in Pakistan. She is the youngest of four children with one older brother and two older sisters. In her earliest years she was raised as a simultaneous bilingual. Both inside and outside of her home, Urdu and Punjabi were used interchangeably. Urdu is the official state language of Pakistan, though Punjabi is the more common vernacular language. As a result, the school that she went to for kindergarten was taught in Punjabi and her older siblings were taught in Punjabi as well. I’m not sure at what point they would begin to teach Urdu in the school as it has a completely different writing system. But as a result, Krakatoa has only had very minimal formal education on just Punjabi, not Urdu. At this time in Pakistan she would have been considered upper class as her family were rich land-owners and were able to send all their children to school. She was also raised Muslim so she was taught how to read Arabic, although she cannot comprehend what she is reading. She also states at this time she knew English as a language existed, but knew nothing of it.
In 2001 at the age of six, Krakatoa and her immediate family immigrated to Windsor, Canada in pursuit of work for her father and a better education for her and her siblings. There she moved in to a fairly tight knit, although large community of Urdu and/or Punjabi speaking Pakistani or Indian Muslims. Although it was a large community it was not fully self-sufficient, so there was no special Urdu or Punjabi school to go to and her father worked as an engineer in a place where he had to understand English. Her mother was a house-maker and only went out into a place where she had to speak English only if it was necessary. Here, Krakatoa was formally educated in English as she started in grade one. As she had just immigrated she was given additional ESL support and classes. She did not feel one way or another on English however, and simply states, “It’s just something I had to learn, like math or science.” So in grade two when they removed her from ESL classes due to her progress, she wanted to be put back in to ESL as she believed it helped her with a class subject. Attitudes at home were different though. As her mother did not speak English and her father spoke minimal English, Krakatoa and her siblings were reprimanded or yelled at if they spoke English at home. This as a result led to her retaining both Urdu and Punjabi as fully spoken languages as English resulted in a negative consequence. Thus she also did not get assistance from them on homework assignments. At school she continued to learn English as her primary language, and then French as a foreign language starting in late elementary school.
In 2009 at age 14 and a sophomore in high school, Krakatoa emigrated from Canada to Canton, Michigan, in the United States. At this point, her family is still considered upper middle class with her dad as an engineer at Ford and her mother still a house-maker. She continues to go through an English-based education but continues to learn French as a foreign language until her senior year of high school in 2013 with her last French class being AP French (equivalent of completing French 202 at a university). In America as well, Krakatoa has a large, tight knit community of other Pakistan or India immigrants who bond from the same language and same faith. She does not use Punjabi or Urdu with her friends who speak the same language as all are of a same background as her and spent more time learning English than Urdu/Punjabi, though she does use it with her friends’ parents and elders. She continues to use Urdu and Punjabi at home but at this time she uses Urdu more heavily than Punjabi. As of now in 2016, she considers herself a fully competent and fluent Urdu speaker, while only a competent Punjabi speaker. She still cannot read Punjabi or Urdu. She still can read Arabic, but cannot comprehend it. She has lost a portion of her French knowledge; she understands what is being said and written a good portion of the time, but is not easily able to form a sentence. Her friends are English users, as well as her siblings, brothers-in-law, and sister-in-law. Her father is a proficient English speaker as he’s able to communicate at work and can carry general conversation, however her mother lacks the ability to fully comprehend English and can only say a very limited amount of high-frequency phrases.
Belle Sobolewski
LING 474, Dr. Lee
22 April 2016
Social Aspects of Interlanguage Applied to Case Study
Socialization is an important part of anyone’s life, no matter how extroverted or introverted they may claim to be. It’s absolutely necessary as well to be able to communicate, as seen with unfortunate cases such as Genie and Victor of Aveyron, both who suffered at their lack of socialization with humans. While not to the same extent as with first language acquisition, socialization is important for second language acquisition as well. The social aspects of interlanguage have the potential to both aid and hurt one’s progression with another language. After a discussion of relevant literature, Krakatoa as a case study will be introduced and explored in the context of how aspects of socialization may have an impact of her English acquisition.
To further understand Krakatoa and her context, I consulted with three different sources. The first one was one related to the linguistics 474 course, which was Rod Ellis’ Second Language Acquisition. In this text I focused on the fourth chapter, titled Social aspects of interlanguage. In this chapter Ellis introduces interlanguage as a stylistic continuum on which the learner has many different performances in differing styles of speech, similar to what a monolingual does. This, as Ellis explains, is done in the context of Tarone’s research. Although this has some problems, notably in the fact these are not hard-lined rules as “sometimes L2 speakers show greatest accuracy in the vernacular style” (Ellis 38) as well as the lack of explanation as to the implication of social factors from the second language culture.
From there Ellis highlights three main theories: Howard Giles’s Accommodation Theory, Schumann’s Acculturation Model, and Pierce’s Social Interaction Model. In Giles’ Accommodation Theory, Ellis explains it “suggests that when people interact with each other they either try to make their speech similar to that of their addressee in order to emphasize social cohesiveness… or to make it different in order to emphasize their social distinctiveness” (Ellis 39). Ellis then explains that Giles’ argument includes ‘long-term convergence’, which Giles believes is integral into acquiring the second language. Next, Ellis then speaks of Schumann’s model in which between the learner and the L2 group “… a ‘good’ learning situation is [defined as] one where there is little social distance” (Ellis 40). Here, Schumann’s model is explained as one where like Giles’, convergence of sociological aspects is required to have an easier time progressing in the language learner’s interlanguage. Finally in this chapter Ellis talks of Pierce’s model, which is a bit different from Giles’ and Schumann’s models. Pierce talks of how the language learner presents themselves and displays their interlanguage into the social contexts, explaining, “A learner’s social identity is… ‘multiple and contradictory,’” (Ellis 42) and that, “learning is successful when learners are able to summon up or construct an identity that enables them to impose their right to be heard” (Ellis 42). This basically states that creating a performative identity is imperative for the language learner because it allows them to confront their interlanguage in the context of others and seek help and correction from more knowledgeable target language speakers.
From Ellis, the next piece of literature I consulted was from H. Douglas Brown’s The Optimal Distance Model of Second Language Acquisition which was published in TESOL Quarterly in June of 1980. Brown begins by questioning what might make someone a successful second language acquisition case. He first brings up the critical hypothesis theory and explains it is “supported by cognitive and affective arguments” (Brown 157). However, while he does admit there is some credence into this, he argues there is more to be explained and explored as there are successful second language learners who began after the critical theory. Brown argues here that this has something to do with the process of acculturation and explains his idea systematically, going through and building upon other already formed and well-known theories.
First, Brown introduces a theory of his own, the Stages of Acculturation. He walks the reader through the four stages of acculturation, starting with excitement before transitioning into cultural shock, then a varying recovery period before reaching a finalized version of assimilation or acculturation (Brown 158-159). Next he talks of Lambert and Durkheim’s inclusion of ‘anomie’ as the “concept of… feelings of social uncertainty or dissatisfaction—as a significant aspect of the relationship between language learning and attitude toward the foreign culture” (Brown 159). He builds upon this with his stages of acculturation, explaining how anomie would be high in the third stage of acculturation as the progression in this stage has the tendency to ebb. From here he brings in Schumann’s Acculturation Model in the context of social distance before bringing up Anton’s 1979 ‘fix’ to Schumann’s model, the Perceived Social Distance Model. Anton explains in relation to Schumann’s model it has less to do with actual physical distance and physical interaction than it does with the psychological perceived distance of the language learner with the target language community (Brown 160). Here, he gives the example of an American learning Arabic in Saudi Arabia where “there may be a relatively large distance between American and Saudi Arabians, but an American… might for a number of reasons perceived little distance, and in turn act on that perception” (Brown 160).
With all those previous theories highlighted and understood in the context Brown raises them in, Brown then hypothesizes on a potential sociocultural critical period and the potential implications of his findings. He takes the stages of acculturation as the base and explains that while anomie is high in the third stage, this may be the best stage for the learner to be “successful in their mastery of the language if they have proceeded beyond early-stage three” (Brown 161). This would also be the case with the additional explanation of Anton’s Perceived Social Distance Theory as it allows a comfortable enough situation with some stress. Brown explains it as the happy medium between stage two of cultural shock where the affective filter is extremely high and stage four of completed assimilation or acculturation where the language learner has already learned to cope and has no pressure placed on learning the language further (Brown 161-162). However, the implications from this theory also brings up the flaws; it’s a limited model that only has the capability to explain second language acquisition when the language learner is immersed into the target culture and applies “potentially to most cases of natural, untutored second language acquisition” (Brown 162) and does not fully address the aid of tutoring and formalized language education.
Also of mention is another article, which is Dwight Atkinson’s Toward a Sociocognitive Approach to Second Language Acquisition, published in the winter 2002 edition of The Modern Language Journal. Although this will not be an article that is fully built upon, it expresses the need of socialization as a basis for cognitive uptake where these processes converge (Atkinson 537). The beginning of this article is done mostly in regard to building upon L1 acquisition through sociolinguistic, cognitive linguistic, and then sociocognitive linguistic approaches before finally touching upon second language acquisition as a sociocognitive phenomenon. From here, he critiques others such as Gass for their quantitative approach to the sociological aspects of second language acquisition where it’s really all about how cognition works inside of social settings as well as the view from Wenger where second language acquisition is solely due to action and participation (Atkinson 537). In addition to that he also speaks about Neo-Vygotskian theories and their adaption of sociocultural theories, explaining that interaction begins as a social interaction, but is eventually internalized and is converged into cognitive realm where it can ultimately reach a stage of “higher mental development” (Atkinson 537). Ultimately Atkinson raises these points to have others look at second language learners as “real people” who deal with an interdependency and integration of both social and cognitive factors instead of solely what he describes others as seeing as ‘automatons’ (Atkinson 539). Although this is a kind sentiment, there do exist some issues with his sociocognitive paper, such as his lack of other factors. While there easily can be an interaction with socialization and cognition, he does not bring up the other factors that may influence language acquisition, such as psychological states and innate abilities or other potentially neurological factors. Despite these shortcomings from all the articles, it’s still possible to get a better insight into the case study of Krakatoa from these three readings.
To begin, one needs to understand who Krakatoa is and her story. Krakatoa was born in 1995 in the city of Lahore in Pakistan. She is the youngest of four children with one older brother and two older sisters. In her earliest years she was raised as a simultaneous bilingual. Both inside and outside of her home, Urdu and Punjabi were used interchangeably. Urdu is the official state language of Pakistan, though Punjabi is the more common vernacular language. As a result, the school that she went to for kindergarten was taught in Punjabi and her older siblings were taught in Punjabi as well. I’m not sure at what point they would begin to teach Urdu in the school as it has a completely different writing system. But as a result, Krakatoa has only had very minimal formal education on just Punjabi, not Urdu. At this time in Pakistan she would have been considered upper class as her family were rich land-owners and were able to send all their children to school. She was also raised Muslim so she was taught how to read Arabic, although she cannot comprehend what she is reading. She also states at this time she knew English as a language existed, but knew nothing of it.
In 2001 at the age of six, Krakatoa and her immediate family immigrated to Windsor, Canada in pursuit of work for her father and a better education for her and her siblings. There she was in what she described as an immigrant community, though it was mainly Arabic speaking immigrants. There was really no one her age who spoke the same languages as her, save for one girl whom her classmates kept distanced from her due to social pressures. Her mother was a house-maker and only went out into a place where she had to speak English only if it was necessary. Here, Krakatoa was formally educated in English as she started in grade one. As she had just immigrated she was given additional ESL support and classes. She did not feel one way or another on English however, and simply states, “It’s just something I had to learn, like math or science.” So in grade two when they removed her from ESL classes due to her progress, she wanted to be put back in to ESL as she believed it helped her with a class subject. Attitudes at home were different though. As her mother did not speak English and her father spoke minimal English, Krakatoa and her siblings were reprimanded or yelled at if they spoke English at home. This as a result led to her retaining both Urdu and Punjabi as fully spoken languages as English resulted in a negative consequence. Thus she also did not get assistance from them on homework assignments. At school she continued to learn English as her primary language, and then French as a foreign language starting in late elementary school.
In 2009 at age 14 and a sophomore in high school, Krakatoa emigrated from Canada to Canton, Michigan, in the United States. At this point, her family is still considered upper middle class with her dad as an engineer at Ford and her mother still a house-maker. She continues to go through an English-based education but continues to learn French as a foreign language until her senior year of high school in 2013 with her last French class being AP French (equivalent of completing French 202 at a university). In America as well, Krakatoa has a large, tight knit community of other Pakistan or India immigrants who bond from the same language and same faith. She does not use Punjabi or Urdu with her friends who speak the same language as all are of a same background as her and spent more time learning English than Urdu/Punjabi, though she does use it with her friends’ parents and elders. She continues to use Urdu and Punjabi at home but at this time she uses Urdu more heavily than Punjabi.
In the context of Ellis, one can explore Krakatoa’s progression through the three theories in the fourth chapter and then expand upon them with the additional information and theories provided by Brown and Atkinson. First, with Giles’s Accommodation Theory, Krakatoa remarks on trying to assimilate or converge with the native-speaker group. She comments on wanting to assimilate and lose her Pakistani culture in favor of becoming Canadian. According to Krakatoa, this is done in order to avoid being bullied for the rest of her life. In this case highlighted especially at 8:05-8:26 and 11:09-11:19 it is a negative catalyst for the motivation, but she was highly motivated to converge due to social pressures to assimilate. So while bullying should not be condoned, in this case it was something that aided Krakatoa in her progression of language acquisition and shows that convergence does aid in the learning of a second language.
Next in Ellis was Schumann’s Acculturation Model, which remarks on the necessary closeness of the learner to the target language culture and speaks of the potential of pigdinization if such a closeness is never accomplished. Krakatoa remarks at 25:56-25:58 how she did not have a culture to fall back on as one of the only Urdu/Punjabi speaking families in her city once in Canada. This would not make pigdinization something possible for her as she had to adapt to be social and live the life of a six year old as there was no Urdu/Punjabi support system. As she felt she had to adapt in order to make these new relationships, she was highly motivated and willing to assimilate and do anything to bridge the social distance. She wanted to be the same and wanted to be socially equal with everyone else, shown during the interview how she was willing to try to talk to her peers despite not being able to fully communicate with them. This is important into her learning as it helped to close the large gap as she willed the closeness through her perseverance of ambiguity in order to ultimately acculturate. This ultimately would pay off as she does become close with her peers and is able to acculturate enough to significantly aid her language acquisition.
This is in part due to her developing perception of social distance. As explained, Brown’s Optimal Distance Model would place her in this third stage of acculturation. After her initial culture shock with no Urdu/Punjabi safety net, she is forced to progress in her acculturation. While the bully would keep her from feeling comfortable, Krakatoa still wills her perception of herself in relation to her other peers in an attempt to reach the fourth and final stage of acculturation. This would keep her in the third stage of acculturation which would afford her the best second language learning as she is neither too close nor too far from the target language culture.
Finally in Ellis’ fourth chapter is Pierce’s Social Interaction Model in which the learner constructs a useable and identifiable identity. Pierce’s model helps to explain what is mentioned at 32:43-33:46. Prior to Krakatoa’s bully moving away, she was unable to construct such an identity and was not empowered with her interlanguage. She comments how she was unable to really even construct a sentence due to the stress and lack of being able to identify herself in a socially cohesive way. Yet after her bully moved away she was more liberated and safe in her linguistic identity and was able to start flourishing due to the subsequent empowerment. She successfully created an identity that would be utilized socially amongst her peers and this helped her to practice and explore her interlanguage.
In addition, some of Atkinson’s sociocognitive approach and the Neo-Vygotskian sociocultural theory can be used to build upon Pierce’s Social Interaction Model. Atkinson brings up the idea of an interdependency between the sociological and cognitive aspects of second language acquisition and explained with the Neo-Vygotskian approach that socialization is the first step before learning can become cognitive. Krakatoa’s progression as stated before rapidly improved after her bully transferred out, which may have some connection to the interdependency of social and cognitive aspects of learning. She was able to socialize after her bully transferred, which would allow her to explore more in the social world and then be able to uptake the knowledge she gained from the social interactions into her cognitive functions, allowing that then to build on further social interactions later down the road. Overall, it can be said that her social interaction greatly improved her second language cognitive ability, regardless of which of these theories were utilized to gain insight on her learning.
Krakatoa Pompeii was originally an Urdu and Punjabi speaker from Lahore, Pakistan before she moved to Canada at the age of six. Her first year in Canada saw a considerable development in her interlanguage. She originally had immigrated with no English in her past but within a year she had been taken out of supplementary ESL classes due to her proficiency by the end of her first academic year in Canada. What stuck out the most during my interview with Krakatoa was her comments on the social aspects of her interlanguage; how she wished to assimilate, her struggles with relating to her new peers and being bullied, and just trying to fit in as the new kid. However, these ultimately were what would aid her in her linguistic journey.
Works Cited
Atkinson, Dwight. "Toward a Sociocognitive Approach to Second Language Acquisition." The Modern Language Journal 86.4 (2002): 525-45.JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Brown, H. Douglas. "The Optimal Distance Model of Second Language Acquisition." TESOL Quarterly 14.2 (1980): 157-64. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Ellis, Rod. "Chapter 4: Social Aspects of Interlanguage." Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. 37-42. Print.
Appendix
5:55 to 8:30
B: And you were talking about sort of not wanting to come into a different culture and a different place…um, when you were moving to Canada… um… so then did you carry any sort of… preference in language with that? Like, did you feel like English went with the Canadian culture, more than like, Urdu or Punjab, Hindi?
K: Well yha but that’s just because when… whenever you go to any foreign place whether it’s uh, in North America, whether it’s Europe, those people exp- or… just people in general, they expect you to adapt, to assimilate into their culture so… it’s, it’s kind of forced on you that you have to learn it because if you don’t then you’re isolated. Uh, then you’re discriminated against and you see… those cases… everywhere especially nowadays. So, for me, it was… like, yha, that’s something that I have to learn because that’s the only way that I can communicate, there’s no way around it.
B: So you do feel like you assimilated?
K: Yha, yha, for sure.
B: Would you say though you felt more like you acculturated? So you kept your home culture and then just brought in more… like, Canadian culture and then… you used, like, the Canadian culture outside and your home culture er did you fully like, get rid of your um-
K: So…
B: -Lahori identity?
K: So for me… I guess since I came here at such a young age, it was difficult for me to kind of, um… group everything together and hold a little piece of it evenly, um, so I became more… I became more um, adapted to this culture, um, and I became – and especially the area where I lived, it was uh, heavily populated with ah, people who spoke Arabic, uh, or Middle Eastern uh people so for me just… tryin ta… get in touch with my background um, I felt uncomfortable because… just the area I was in it was just um… I was a minority, I was someone who didn’t really fit in so for me to fit in, I kind of had to adapt and… just so I wouldn’t- I remember when I was in first grade I was bullied and everything so I didn’t want that to be common throughout my life, so I uh, it the only uh, the only way I found around it was to assimilate. However, um, I did become more religious.
25:01 to 26:10
K: Um… I’m tryin ta think… well see, because I don’t remember too much about being..- except that one night, that we were… by the airport and I was like crying and like I do not want to leave, I don’t wanna leave my- and especially because when we came here, we didn’t have any family here, we didn’t have anyone that was established here, so we came here and we knew no one. … Um, and, that’s part of why it’s- it was so necessary for me to make those relationships here because I didn’t have anyone… um and I think that’s partly why I wanted to become Canadian… it’s because I didn’t have anyone else to relate to, everyone that I had known was left back home and I thought that was something I’m supposed to do- I’m supposed to… make these new relationships… because who knows when I’m going to go back home?
B: So your attitude was more about necessity than say like-
K: Yha like, survival-
B: -Ok
K: -Right? Like survival of the fittest. If you can’t adapt to this culture then you’re screwed.
32:10 to 33:45
K: Basically yha. I still remember the face... of the girl that bullied me… and it still it-
B: -And you have no idea what she said
K: No, because I mean I couldn’t understand her, I just remember I was trying to hang out with them and they walked away. I mean it’s grade one you’re scarred for life. You’re scarred for life, and they’re bratty little children… that think that they own the world.
B: So, at what point would you’ve considered yourself fluent in English by then? Cuz if you were taken out-
K: Two
B: -Yha it would be-
K: It’s two
B: Yha, because if you were taken out of ESL…
K: Yha in grade two and that’s also because… my bully left. She tran- she moved to another school, so I didn’t have someone that was holding me back. So I was able to become more comfortable and more open and uh… I, I was able to- all of the people that hated me in grade one… they became my really good friends in grade two.
B: So you felt safe at that point with her gone.
K: Yha. Yha, and then at that point I could actually, you know… write a sentence, say a sentence, I could communicate with them. Which- people don’t think that that’s a big deal but it is… because if you’re not able to communicate with anyone… you feel lonely, you feel depressed… you know? It-it’s something that gnaws at you… day and night and… when you’re able to… just break that barrier and you’re able to be like, hey you know, I can… finally talk to you, I finally understand you, and you finally understand me, you don’t feel as alone anymore.