COMMENTARY: INSISTING UPON ENGLISH

Unlike Evelyn Lo, who accepted her students' use of languages other than English, Anne Yee tried to limit such use by introducing an English-only policy in her classroom. As discussed in the interview above, students who were overheard speaking languages other than English while they were in class were assigned classroom chores to complete. These chores included such tasks as cleaning the chalkboard and handing out books or assignments. The names of those students who had been given chores to complete were written in a corner of the chalkboard and were erased once the students had completed them.

Mrs. Yee's interests in promoting English monolingualism in her classroom had to do with her belief that the more opportunities that ESOL students had to practice English during the school day, the better access they had to the socioeconomic benefits associated with English, the dominant language of mainstream society. This belief was supported by the understandings she had of her ESOL students' linguistic communities both inside and outside of school. Having been a high-school student from Hong Kong herself, Mrs. Yee had a personal understanding of the dilemma for Cantonese speakers articulated in the Introduction. Although socializing and working almost exclusively in Cantonese at school helped students succeed both socially and academically, it did not provide them with many opportunities to practice English. Nor were there many opportunities to practice English at home where family members usually communicated in Cantonese.

Commenting on the argument Mrs. Yee offers for her classroom English-only policy, sociolinguist Angel Lin (personal communication) suggested that the "maximum exposure" argument is one that is frequently constructed, reinforced and invoked in the media and academic discourses in Hong Kong. "Parents, teachers, school principals and government officials in Hong Kong," she says, "frequently draw on the 'maximum exposure' argument to rationalize English only or English dominant policies in the schooling system. This argument has followed from the cognitive 'input-output' model, which was dominant in the Second-Language Acquisition (SLA) and Teaching English as a Second or Other Language research (TESOL)."¹ Lin also suggested that Mrs. Yee's beliefs about the importance of English only in her classroom may have been constructed by her SLA/TESOL education which privileged the input-output model of second language learning over other models. Although Anne Yee did not mention the input-output model of second language learning when asked about important influences on her teaching practice, she did mention another dominant SLA discourse that helped construct her teaching beliefs, the discourse of "articulation flexibility." The English-only policy in Anne's classroom was related to her belief that it is crucial for her students to develop their oral English skills in high school because the articulation flexibility required for second-language acquisition deteriorates after adolescence. Importantly, the discourse of articulation, like other psycholinguistic and Universal Grammar approaches in the field of SLA, assumes a generic language user. It disregards any variation between individuals as "noise," that is, a distraction that cannot be avoided, but which cannot in any way contribute to our understanding of the universal facts of SLA (Piller & Pavlenko, 2001). However, as mentioned in the Introduction, a more recent model of second language learning and teaching conceptualizes language learners as complex social beings who learn and use the second language in a variety of social contexts. This sociolinguistic, sociolcultural model of language learning suggests that it is the desire to construct particular identities that underlies a learner's investment (or the lack of investment) in language learning.² If second-language learning hinges on community building and identity construction rather than, or perhaps in addition to, exposure to the target language, then the "maximum exposure" and "articulation flexibility" arguments, which have been used to justify many English-only or English-dominant policies and practices in our schools, are problematic. Further discussion of the maximum exposure argument appears later in the Pedagogical Discussion.

In addition to her interest in her ESOL students' academic and economic future, Mrs. Yee's promotion of English can also be linked to her interest in avoiding classroom conflicts that can accompany multilingual practices. For Mrs. Yee, the use of languages other than English in her classroom could create a "problem of equity," such as Theresa Lubov's perception, that Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking students had "more advantage" than she did in Mrs. Lo's math class.

¹ For further discussion of how the "maximum exposure" argument has followed from the input-output model, see Lin (1997a).

² See the Introduction, Norton (2000), and Norton Peirce (1995) for further discussion on investment in second-language learning.

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