Sato asks a question,” What is the role of English in American Education and society?” She further explains that English cannot be “preserved” because language is a living, dynamic tool of human beings; it is inevitable that the American English will change, and we cannot stop it. According to this article, by the year 2020, it is estimated that the Latino population will total 17 million, and they are having children who can potentially sustain our future. I imagine that the whole country will speak Spanish-English by then, it sounds strange, yet seems possible if the population estimation is correct. In that case, the Standard English might also be regarded as book English, dead English, or it can be regarded as not quite follow the fashion. It reminds me the fashion of jeans in different period of time in China: bell-bottom style, narrow style, or loose style. The funny part is that we learn the correct, Standard English today, and then we will actually teach different, or non-standard English in our classroom in the future. I kind of wonder how do we, as teachers, adjust to the new language style. It also reminds me my observation in both schools, I haven’t seen any teachers teach grammar simply because they haven’t been trained to do so. If we are not trained to teach in different languages’ atmosphere today, how can we handle the challenge of the diversity of languages in our classroom and feel OK? I really think that the MAT program should have a course that trains us how to handle foreign students like me or any other nationality. Otherwise, when we have our own classroom in the near future, we will have a headache and not know how to deal with certain cultural, language, and other problems. I, personally, can only handle the Chinese students in an English classroom, maybe some Japanese students, but not Latino students because I don’t even know one word of that language. Sato’s idea is ideal, yet I really don’t know how to apply it in a classroom at this point.
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