English Language Teaching in its Social Context

Chapter 13A. Suresh CanagarajahCRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF A SRILANKAN CLASSROOM: AMBIGUITIES INSTUDENT OPPOSITION TOREPRODUCTION THROUGH ESOLIntroductionH I S C H A PT E R A R G U E S T H AT T H E way in which domination is experiencedT and oppositional tendencies are formed in classroom life has to be observed closelyrather than conceived abstractly.This ethnographic study of 22 tertiary-levelTamil studentsfollowing a mandatory English for general purposes (EGP) course reveals that whereas thelived culture displays opposition to the alienating discourscs inscribed in a U.S. textbook,the students affirm in their more conscious statements before and after the course theirstrong motivation to study ESOL. Interpreting this contradiction as reflecting the conflictstudents face between cultural integrity, on the one hand, and socioeconomic mobility, onthe other, the study cxplains how students’ dcsire for learning only grammar in a productorientedmanner enables them to be somewhat detached from cultural alienation whilebeing sufficiently examination oriented to pass the course and fulfill a socioeconomicnecessity. However, this two-pronged strategy is an ideologically limiting oppositionalbehavior that contains elements of accommodation as well as resistance and unwittinglyleads students to participate in their own domination.The recent introduction of poststructuralist perspectives on language and radicaltheories of schooling that view language teaching as a political act is a long-awaiteddevelopment inTESOL. Such theories enjoy much currency in L1 circles, almost becomingthe orthodoxy in areas like composition teaching, with words like discourse and empowermentbecoming clichkd and posing the danger that they might have lost their critical edge.TESOL,on the other hand, while being a far more controversial activity, has managed to see itselfas safely “apolitical” due to its positivistic preoccupation with methods and techniques.In recent issues of the TESOL Quarterly, scholars such as Pcnnycook (1 989) and Pcirce(1 989) have deconstructetl dominant methods and the idea of method itself in order toexpose the ideologies that inform TESOL. Though their papers perform a pioneeringfunction, the force with which they are compelled to present their theses also involves somesimplification. Whereas Penny cook’s delineation of ideological domination throughTESOLappears overdetermined and pessimistic, Pcirce’s characteri/ation of the possibilities of