The Possibilities of Asian American Citizenship: A Critical Race and Gender Analysis

Conventionally, citizenship is understood as a legal category of membership in a national polity that ensures equal rights among its citizens. This conventional understanding, however, begs disruption when the histories and experiences of marginalized groups are brought to the fore. Equal citizenship in all its forms for marginalized populations has yet to be realized. For Asian Americans, rights presumably accorded to the legal status of citizenship have proven tenuous across different historical and political moments. Throughout U.S. history, Asian American or Oriental men and women have been designated aliens against whom white male and female citizenships have been legitimized. These categories of inclusion and exclusion- citizen and alien -are mutually constitutive; members are legitimate only when defined against the exclusion of others. Citizenship must be conceptualized as a broader set of social and cultural memberships and exclusions beyond political rights and legal status. This article examines how scholarly works engage citizenship formations of Asian American women and men. It also asks: Are there modes of citizenship, other than legal status and rights, to explain the experiences and histories of Asian American men and women, as well as provide anti-racist, feminist sites of resistance in the struggle for equality

Learning about Chinese-speaking cultures at a distance

This chapter focuses on the challenges posed by curriculum choices and pedagogical frameworks to the study of Languages of the Wider World in the UK. These languages reflect complex linguistic and cultural realities that do not fit into the traditional constraints of language education, which raises questions about the extent to which we can address the global and local dimensions of the target languages and cultures. I examine in particular the case of Chinese – a language family with multiple varieties and spoken by many communities in Asia and other parts of the globe – in the context of distance education. Issues surrounding language learning at a distance are discussed, as well as the role that teachers and technology play in supporting the development of language learners’ cultural awareness. While teachers can, in a face-to-face situation, exploit, expand and discuss cultural information, this possibility is very limited in distance learning. We will see how, at present, technology has taken on a major role in both formal and informal education, facilitating contact between learners and between learners and teachers (however distant they might be). For example, the Open University’s beginners’ Chinese course discussed here makes use of online forums to enable cultural interaction; initial examinations of these forums reveal the students to be diverse and mobile, and they also give us a sense of their cultural stances, and of the shapes of the beliefs, values and attitudes supported by their individual cultural backgrounds

MAINTAINING FIRST LANGUAGE: BILINGUALS’ VOICES

Indonesia is known as a multicultural country which has thousand different languages Most of its citizens are believed to be able to communicate by using two or morelanguages. This qualitative research, by employing case study approach, was done withthe purpose of figuring out and describing bilinguals’ voices in maintaining their firstlanguage. The discussion centered on their ways to keep their first language. Thisresearch was conducted at Jambi University and ten participants took part in this casestudy. To get the data, the researcher distributed demographic questionnaires andinterviewed the participants. Then, the researcher used within case and cross casedisplays and analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1994) to analyze the interview data. Thefindings showed that there were three major ways done by bilinguals to maintain theyfirst language, among others; 1) Doing interaction, 2) The use of ICT, and 3) The use obooks and song

Epistemological and interpersonal stance in a data description task : findings from a discipline-specific learner corpus

This article examines the stance options used by writers responding to a data description task in the discipline of Statistics. Based on a small learner corpus, it uses inductive qualitative content analysis to explore both the content propositions that students included in their writing, and the ways in which they expressed evaluative stance vis-à-vis such propositions. In the light of an interview with a specialist informant, the article discusses the appropriacy of the content choices and stance options taken by students. It then discusses the potential exploitation of the learner corpus for pedagogic purposes

English language in rural Malaysia: situating global literacies in local practices

This paper claims that underlying the naturalisation of teaching and learning of English in the Malaysian education system are ideological pressures and political dogmas, often emerging from colonial, urban/rural and even local ethnic conflicts and hierarchies. It suggests therein lie the inherent difficulties of teaching and learning English in rural communities in Malaysia. Three paradigms frame this view in the paper: the overarching view of literacy as a situated and variable social process; the use of an ethnographic perspective in investigating English language and literacy education in Malaysia; the stance on the need for Malaysians to acquire English as an additive rather than as a deficit philosophy

The English Curriculum in the People's Republic of China

The status and role of English as a school subject in China has fluctuated wildly because of its desirable but sensitive connotations. English is the language of world trade and communications, which makes its study an important strategy in implementing internationally-oriented policies for "modernization", while its historical overtones of imperialism, capitalism and even barbarianism are unwelcome for those who prefer more self-reliant and isolationist approaches. This paper traces the career of the English curriculum in China since 1949, with particular reference to the junior secondary school curriculum, through an analysis of the national syllabus and textbooks. It identifies five distinct periods and analyses the major forces of curriculum change, the dynamics of curriculum design, and the principal features of models for change in each of the periods. It is argued that the overall process of policy-making, and curriculum development specifically, has been characterized by a complexity and pattern of development which is not adequately recognized in existing portrayals that have focused on the relationship between macro political shifts and educational policies, and have emphasized the role of the state

TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL USING CONSTRUCTIVISM APPROACH

Constructivism approach is the newest way to teach Language as foreign language. Mostly, many Vocational high schools in Indonesia use behaviorist approach which the students have to say what the teacher says and what the book says. The problems are; is the method appropriate? Is it works effectively or not? Does it give some benefits for the students or will become the parts of his life? These questions must be considered to achieve success in language acquisition not only as something that is accomplished in the classroom during the particular course, but also as a life-long activity, considering the graduates of Vocational high school students are prepared for the business world . This paper attempts to give a scratch of constructivism approach in teaching English as foreign language which might be a great necessity for the teacher of vocational high school. The content also involves Curriculum in order to be accuracy with the materials. Several points should be taken into consideration to apply the best method in classroom teaching