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ENGLISH
PORTUGUESE LINGUISTICS & CULTURE |
Autor: | Adrian |
E-mail: | não-disponível |
Data: | 19/JUN/2003 4:51 PM |
Assunto: | EFL and Iraq |
Mensagem: | The June issue of Z Magazine has a commentary on Iraq called "Teaching the Language of the Conqueror" by Bill Templer, professor at the University of Leipzip. According to him, it will need either entire battalions of interpreters or brigades of imported teachers of EFL to administer the 'reconstructed' Iraq. However, this new frontier for the English language raises a tricky question for a pacifist EFL teacher: how can I be a post-war worker in Iraq if I was against the invasion? As an international language, these are the controversies problematic that English carries, as Templer lists: - The linkage between the diffusion of English and social inequality; - English as a gatekeeper to privilege and power; - The certain future gap between the "globally educated" and the masses in their own society, set to be widened and deepened by expanding the teaching. Not surprisingly, these problematic concerns aren't new for any society today, especially those in the Third World. As 'knowledge', the English language, spoken or written, normally tries to show just its frost layer, hiding the rest of the 'cake'. |