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An Emergence of English Language Variety in Cambodia

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Title: An Emergence of English Language Variety in Cambodia


1
An Emergence of English Language Variety in
Cambodia
  • The 12th ESEA Conference Trends and Directions
  • Presenter Keuk Chan Narith
  • RUPP/ IFL English Department

2
An 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.

3
An 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).

4
An 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.

5
An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia
  • Needs of English language
  • - living survival
  • - higher education
  • - diplomatic relationship
  • - seeking residency abroad

6
An 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.

7
An 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.

8
An 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.

9
An 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.

10
An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia
  • Ellis (1996) Cognitive processing
  • - noticing
  • - comparing
  • - integrating
  • - restructuring

11
An 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.

12
An 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.

13
An 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

14
An 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

15
An 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.

16
An 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.

17
An 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.

18
An 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).

19
An 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.

20
An 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.

21
An 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.

22
An 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)

23
An 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.

24
An 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.

25
An 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.

26
An 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.

27
An 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.

28
An 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.

29
An 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.

30
An 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.

31
An 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.

32
An 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.

33
An 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.

34
Reference
  • 1. Adgar, M. 1997. Language and Culture. The
    Biculture in Bilingual. Coupland, N. and A.
    Jaworski, eds. Sociolinguistic. A Reader and
    Coursebook. London Macmillan Press Ltd.
  • 2. Cook, G. 2003. Applied Linguistics. Oxford
    Introduction to Language Study. Oxford.
  • 3. Crystal, David. 1997. English as a Global
    Language. Cambridge CUP
  • 4. Gumperz, J., J. 1997. Interactional
    Sociolinguistics Interethnic Communication.
    Coupland, N. and A. Jaworski, eds.
    Sociolinguistic. A Reader and Coursebook. London
    Macmillan Press Ltd.
  • 5. Kachru, Braj, ed. 1992. The Other Tongue
    English Across Cultures. Illinois University of
    Illinois Press.
  • 6. Littlewood, W., T. 1994. Foreign and Second
    Language Learning. Language-acquisition research
    and its implications for the classroom. Cambridge
    University Press.

35
  • Thank you!
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