Title: An Emergence of English Language Variety in Cambodia
1An Emergence of English Language Variety in
Cambodia
- The 12th ESEA Conference Trends and Directions
- Presenter Keuk Chan Narith
- RUPP/ IFL English Department
2An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia
- Purposes of the paper
- to seek preliminary understanding of features of
Cambodian people and learners language - to investigate causes which encourage to such
features - to examine intelligibility of English language
used in this country to foreigners, native or
non-native speakers of English language and - to discuss alternatives for improving English
language training in Cambodia.
3An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia
- Background information
- The history of English language spread into
Cambodia - - before civil war (1975) French was a dominant
foreign language in Cambodia due to French
colonization (1863-1954) English was little
learnt and spoken in the American colonization
(1970-1975).
4An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia
- - after Genocidal regime (1980late 1980s)
English and French were prohibited Russian and
Vietnamese were taught in schools. - - UNTAC (1990s) English became a dominant
foreign language. In mid 1990s, the Royal
Government of Cambodia declared English and
French as foreign languages in Cambodia.
5An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia
- Needs of English language
- - living survival
- - higher education
- - diplomatic relationship
- - seeking residency abroad
6An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia
- English language training
- In addition to formal training of teachers of
English sponsored by AUSAIDS, a huge number of
private/ informal English language classes were
opened. In this situation, the Khmer people who
have known English better would teach the ones
who dont English language.
7An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia
- Literature review
- Kirkpatrick (2005)s study for International
seminar at RELC - The added /s/ sound at the end of the words
spoken by Cambodian could be seen as another
expanding circle or learner features of English
language.
8An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Stern (1997)
- In order to study a language variety in one
country, ones must study the language that
learners produce, which he calls as interlanguage
studies.
9An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Littlewood (1994) constructivist view
- Second or foreign language learners, similar
to children of their first language, are actively
constructing rules of the target language they
are exposed to and gradually adapting these rules
in order to form the target language system.
10An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Ellis (1996) Cognitive processing
- - noticing
- - comparing
- - integrating
- - restructuring
11An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Framework of the study
- Littlewood (1997)s suggestion
- 1) Language transfer
- The learners use their previous native language
experience as a means of organizing the second
language.
12An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- 2) Overgeneralization
- The majority of intralingual errors are
instances of the same process of
overgeneralization that has been observed in
first language acquisition. - ?Learners use their previous knowledge of the
second or foreign language that they use to
generalize the target language systems.
13An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- 3) Non-standard errors
- The assumption is that the speech which
learners produce is a direct reflection of the
rules which they have internalized, that is, of
their underlying competence in the second or
foreign language. - Two factors for discussion
- - immediate communication strategies
- - performance factors
14An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- 4) Errors due to the effects of teaching
- If a learner is taking part in formal
instruction, some errors will be a direct result
of misunderstanding caused by faulty teaching or
materials. - - Material uses
- - The effectiveness of teaching
15An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Method
- - Qualitative analyses of the recorded materials
in forms of interviews, group discussions,
learners presentations and other means of
communication and written materials offered by
his students. - - Participants year-two students at RUPP,
Institute of Foreign Languages, English Dept. and
2 Australian, 1 American, 1 Swedish, and 1
Singaporean.
16An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Findings Conclusion
- One major problem is phonological features.
- - Learners mistress English words.
- - Learners mispronounce /ð/, and /d/ /?/, /?/,
and /s/ /z/ and /?/. - - Learners do not pronounce the ending
- sounds of words.
17An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- yes main problems for Khmer people who speak
English is that therere two problems for Khmer
speakers one is intonation. So you talk about in
Khmer you say table, this is a table no
stress. In English we say Table, so we stress
ta and we go down on ble. Another one is that
Khmer do not pronounce clearly the end of the
words. when I first came here I never knew what
they said because I never heard the end of the
words. I cant understand what they said, said
an American teacher who has been working in
Cambodia for four years.
18An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- - Learners tend to pronounce /s/ at the end of
words adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, etc. - Ex. In an interview 3
- Yes. In fact the study always have a difficulty
but er- in er- my study in IFL I face some of
problems such as er- er- manys documents I
have to reads mores such er- more such for
example I have tos search for mores books for
develop myself but I think I dont have enough
time for me to work ands study at the same time.
(s means the speaker dropped ending sound).
19An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- ?Some of these features are caused by
non-equivalence in the two languages in
phonological propositions in the form of language
transfer and overgeneralization of the target
language.
20An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- A second major problem is the features caused by
language transfer. It is affected by learners
experience in the native language and knowledge
of other languages they know and use. - - Culturally, Khmer language and Khmer culture
do affect English language learning.
21An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Ex. One obvious feature of English language which
is not found in Khmer language is article (a, an,
and the). - Khmer learners of English language may
interchangeably use a, an and the, or they may
not use these articles at all. Lets look into
the extract of one university learners
introduction of a reflection paper.
22An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- A short story, An Incident, was given me a
valuable of life of human being after I read it.
The story was set in China more than fifty years
ago. The incident was happened at ? South Gate
during the winter of 1917 when ? rickshaw man was
hired for taking a rich man to ? South Gate.
Suddenly, when ? old woman crossing the road, she
had left the pavement without warning to cut
across in front of the rickshaw. The main actor
is ? rickshaw man who is the kindly gentleman.
Another people are ? old woman, ? police man and
? man who is hiring the rickshaw, ? rich man. (9
articles were dropped)
23An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Another major problem is caused by the learners
immediate needs to use English language to
achieve some communicative purposes. - - Beginners, or less competent people or
learners attempt to speak English language for
their living survivals and communication.
24An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Ex. One student sent his message to his lecturer
for his late submission of his assignment - Thanks, lecturer for your apology. I submit my
assignment late. - This learner got the wrong lexical choice of
apology for forgiveness or just permission.
25An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Another major problem is caused by teaching.
- - Materials available in Cambodia for English
language teaching and learning. - - American English-made materials
- - British English-made materials
- - Other English-made materials writers in
Singapore, Philippines, Indian.
26An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Intelligibility
- - An American teacher, who has been teaching
English for 4 years in Cambodia, found it hard to
understand Cambodian people, esp. his students
English language because the dropping of ending
sounds of words.
27An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- An Australian teacher, who has stayed in Cambodia
or five months, noticed that English spoken in
Cambodia is similar to English in other Southeast
Asia countries. She added that Cambodian people
do attempt to communicate, to speak English. She
could understand it quite well.
28An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- - Another Australian teacher had problem with the
sounds its difficult to distinguish between
thing, sing, etc. - - A Singaporean teacher, working as a teacher in
the Teacher Attachment Program, found a bit
difficult at the beginning to understand each
other in the classes. It took him one or two
sessions.
29An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- - An advisor to English language learning and
teaching, a Swedish professor, spent quite a long
time to understand her students essays. She
pointed out that Khmer students used on the
other hand to add more ideas, rather than to
contrast their previous arguments.
30An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Discussion
- In terms of intelligibility, Smith (1997) suggest
that people who involve in communication in the
target language should try to make themselves
intelligible, comprehensible, and interpretable
to their interlocutors.
31An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- Communicative strategies should be used to foster
communication and/or refresh communication
breakdown. - Learners should have been exposed to such
communicative strategies and English language
varieties, esp. Englishes in Southeast Asian
countries to reduce miscommunication in the
target language.
32An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- More studies should be done in Cambodia in order
to explore in-depth features of English language
(interlanguage) adopted by Cambodian learners and
people. - Another research should also look into how much
intelligible and comprehensible Cambodian
learners English language is, ane when
communication breaks up, how Cambodian speakers
refresh it to bring success in communication.
33An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
- The observation and investigation into teachers
and learners attitude to English language
variety in Cambodia should be conducted so that
any attention and measure should be developed to
strengthen the quality of and redirect ways of
English language teaching and learning.
34Reference
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Introduction to Language Study. Oxford. - 3. Crystal, David. 1997. English as a Global
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Coupland, N. and A. Jaworski, eds.
Sociolinguistic. A Reader and Coursebook. London
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English Across Cultures. Illinois University of
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