Language registers, scaffolding and language styles.

I have always held the view that in learning a foreign language, it is best to treat it as one language. To me the spoken language, written language, business language, academic language, are all really one. I try to speak as neutrally as possible, keep my writing as simple and straight forward as possible. I focus on learning the words and phrases I am interested in.

If I spend a month or two on a Tolstoi novel, that will be the vocabulary that I focus on, and feel most comfortable with. If I needed to communicate on economics I would focus my reading and listening on that kind of content. If I wanted to write business letters, I would read business letters, probably have someone record them for me to listen to, and save words and phrases from them at LingQ.

I have never considered these things as different forms of the language, just variations on a common base. Much of the basic vocabulary is the same. Focusing on different types of content helps to round out your language skills. I would never take a course on business Russian, or academic Russian. I would consider it a waste of time. Now that is just me.

Here are some exchanges from my language teacher's listserv. I would be interested in your opinions on how to deal with different language styles.

......

"On vacation I had a place and time to think about my last year's Thai 
student

I spoke English with her, corrected her English, and edited her 
academic papers.

I was struck by something people on this list probably take for 
granted:  she had one "mode" or discourse
of English, which she used for both speaking and writing. Academic 
writing is  a different discourse than
spoken English.  Consequently, we spent a lot of time pulling apart 
her spoken English and inserting a more
  academic style

Has anyone on the list encountered this problem?  Any useful thoughts?

What I did:  "You can't say that on a paper, we'll have to find 
another  [phrase, sentence] that will work better."

..........

"I teach on the for-credit side at a community college. Many of our students are long-term immigrants whose spoken English is fine. In fact, some of our students have graduated from US high schools. One of their biggest problems is they don't understand there is more than one register. I spend a lot of time teaching students the difference between everyday spoken English and more formal academic English. I don't have any specific materials, but just keep reminding them."

................

"We are presumably all familiar with the importance of scaffolding in instruction, i.e. building upon our learners' background knowledge.  Registers are associated with real-life domains.  We need to work on helping those domains take on a life of their own, so to speak, and the register will then be context-embedded and more meaningful, thus easier to learn and use rather than residing in the "abstract.""

Comments

[Neil]

Whatever happened to plain English. That last quote from a teacher is just pompous poppycock: "Registers are assosiated with domains"?? - indeed, and as for "context embedded" - for God's sake spare us.

Steve, such scandalous abuse of the English language ought not appear on your site, other than as an example of how not to write. It must confuse the hell out your clients trying to learn English.

That teacher should start again with a copy of Strunk and White's primer on Plain English.

Neil

[Eric]

In some cases, this is not possible, and one must learn two registers of a language, such as Arabic, where the written language and formal register is closer to Classical Arabic, and the informal, spoken variety is actually a distinct dialect depending upon where one is. In fact, philological analysis has shown Classical Arabic and the regional dialects to be from different branches of Arabic rather than all of the dialects developing from Classical Arabic.

One can get by to an extent with only Modern Standard Arabic, but at some point, knowledge of the regional dialect will be necessary. Of course, these registers are normally mixed in educated Arabic speech.

This might be the case wherever there is diglossia in a population.

[Steve Kaufmann]

Yeah Neil, that last comment is quite something. I asked the person who wrote it if he could say the same thing in simple language for the lay person. Here was his reply.

"Hello Steve and all,

I like to draw on mathematics (which I also teach) to explain the terms "scaffolding" and "register." An example of scaffolding would be the need to master the four mathematical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division as a prerequisite to solving geometric problems. The operations constitute the background knowledge, and the register is comprised of the terms one learns in the process, such as addends, sums, factors, products, divisors, dividends, quotients, and so on. Similarly, medical doctors have registers of their own, vocabulary they use when they make diagnoses, write prescriptions, etc.

Steve: I took note that you referred presumably to yourself as a "layperson" when I used the terms. In my own 33 years of teaching and 3+ years of graduate work in TESOL and educational linguistics (which I embarked on at the age of 42), I discovered, often years later when more and more of the learning began to make sense ("fall into place") that the research the field has conducted to date and the (current state of) knowledge it provides play a huge role in effective instruction. I mention this only because you espouse strong views about second language acquisition, and wonder whether you would perhaps revisit your positions if you took it upon yourself to delve also into the academia that has helped many teachers become better teachers as a result of those in the discipline who devote great effort and much time to further develop it.

I, for one, believe that learning is a lifetime endeavor. Further, the more we "learn," the less we appear to claim to know, because we become increasingly aware of our own shortcomings. Language learning is not magical (although L1 development is quite miraculous), and I often tell my students that I do not have a vaccine I can administer to expedite their learning. A lot of attention and hard work are involved for most learners who reach high levels of proficiency, whatever that means..."

[Igor]

"G. B. Shaw once said that he spoke English in three different languages: one in his plays, another in his day-to-day life, and yet another in his intimate relationships."

KATÓ LOMB
1970

[Steve Kaufmann]

G.B.Shaw strikes me as someone whose observations were based more on ideology than on what he was supposed to be observing.

After visiting the USSR in the 1930s where he met Stalin, Shaw became an ardent supporter of the Stalinist USSR. The preface to his play On the Rocks (1933) is primarily an effort to justify the pogroms conducted by the State Political Directorate (OGPU). In an open letter to the Manchester Guardian, he dismisses stories of a Soviet famine as slanderous and calls reports of its exploited workers falsehoods.[58] He wrote a defense of Stalin's espousal of Lysenkoism in a letter to Labour Monthly.[59]

[Dr. Pepper]

Neil - the poppycock you refer to is specialized vocabulary (aka jargon) because phenomena in that field need a name to be referred to. Just because the lay person does not get these terms does not mean they are poppycock. The list is presumably for people in that professional circle. If you had a listserv of auto-mechanics they would use words like crank-shaft and CV-joint. Those don't mean much to me, but they do to them.

As far as Strunk and White goes - as far as I am concerned it's completely useless. As an undergrad, whose first language was no English, I never understood why we were using this useless book - until I realized that it was an american institution and like some national/cultural institutions we are taught to not challenge them.

Steve, you refer to this listserv quite often, can you point us to the address so we can subscribe to? Thanks in advance :-)

[Steve Kaufmann]

Dr. Pepper,

Car mechanics use their technical terms in talking to customers. They do not have listservs, they do not go to conferences and talk in a language that only they understand.

Can you explain what this means?
"Registers are associated with real-life domains. We need to work on helping those domains take on a life of their own, so to speak, and the register will then be context-embedded and more meaningful, thus easier to learn and use rather than residing in the "abstract."""

The listserv is
englishlanguage@nifl.gov