I came across the term "glocalized communication" a few years ago when I was researching perspectives, on teaching English language learners, similar to mine. I found the term in a chapter of a book about language policies edited by Suresh Canagarajah. The chapter is an extension of an article written by the same authors a few years earlier. Below is the reference to that article.
Lin, A., Wang, W., Akamatsu, N., & Riazi, A. M. (2002). Appropriating English, expanding identities, and re-visioning the field: From TESOL to teaching English for glocalized communication (TEGCOM). Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 1(4), 295-316.
What appealed to me the most came not from the original article but from the last section of the chapter, titled "International TESOL Professionals and Teaching English for Glocalized Communication (TEGCOM)," in which the authors proposed a research program for TEGCOM. I believe that providing their preliminary outline for this program will help you understand my perspective as a teacher and a researcher:
Lin, A., Wang, W., Akamatsu, N., & Riazi, A. M. (2002). Appropriating English, expanding identities, and re-visioning the field: From TESOL to teaching English for glocalized communication (TEGCOM). Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 1(4), 295-316.
What appealed to me the most came not from the original article but from the last section of the chapter, titled "International TESOL Professionals and Teaching English for Glocalized Communication (TEGCOM)," in which the authors proposed a research program for TEGCOM. I believe that providing their preliminary outline for this program will help you understand my perspective as a teacher and a researcher:
- "Toward socially, culturally, historically, and institutionally situated perspectives in doing research on English language learning, curriculum development, and teacher education in a variety of contexts; foregrounding the social, cultural, and historical situatedness of human communication and activities.
- "Decentering the production of the discipline's knowledge and discourse from Anglo-speaking countries to a diversity of sociocultural contexts in the world.
- "Drawing on anthropological research methods and interpretive sociological methods, including narrative analysis, discourse analysis, school, cultural, and critical ethnography, cultural studies, and autobiographic studies" (2004, p. 218-219).
Similar to the authors' claim, this worldview has helped me develop a deeper understanding of diverse local pedagogical practices that I have encountered in Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United States. I have become more aware of issues of agency, identity, ownership, appropriation, resistance, and the use of the English language in diverse contexts. The final claim is something that I believe I brought with me when I entered the field of English language teaching from my liberal arts undergraduate education and being raised in a multicultural family, "a deeper understanding of various cross-cultural encountered in diverse sociocultural settings."
One of the key ideas to TEGCOM is the attempt to remove the false dichotomy of native speaker and non-native speaker. Even in 2013, this false dichotomy is still widely used. I admit to using it as a label for novices or those outside the field of English language teaching to understand, but I feel that this does not help the social and cultural perspectives of the English language. For me, tackling this issue helps me develop the perspective of teaching English for glocalized communication.
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