Amglish In, Like, Ten Easy Lessons_ A Celebration of the New World Lingo - Arthur E. Rowse [20]
While formal English is being increasingly rejected by the population as a whole, remedial classes to support it have proliferated. As a result, many students essentially major in the subject to the exclusion of a broader education.
Although remedial teachers may be able to claim some improvements in test scores, the overall experience may be souring students by the millions on learning the standard language, while they frolic outside the classroom in an atmosphere where virtually the only learning comes from fun and games.
The plight of one remedial student illustrates the dilemma. The following Amglish was posted on Yahoo! Answers by a student calling himself Jason:
I can’t pass remedial english class? this is my third time taking it finally i have passed to the 2nd semester of it but i’m burnt out. im doing good on everything besides English and i have heard that college level English classes 101 and 1A are way easier than remedial English class. can someone help me out i don’t know what to do10
Remedial English courses are even beginning to become explosive. A “civil war” broke out in 2010 at City College of San Francisco (CCSF), when a college trustee suggested that such classes be limited to one year instead of being required for as many as five semesters. Approximately 90 percent of the 100,000 students at CCSF are not considered ready for introductory English 1A. As a result of the furor, CCSF chancellor Don Q. Griffin decided to shorten the remedial courses.
CALLING ALL INNOVATORS
My review of research papers on remedial English courses shows virtually no effort to examine their relevance to the vast bulk of young people today. Nor does there appear to be any rush to devise new ways to teach English in such changing conditions.
A major review of the situation by the University of Massachusetts in August 2010 confirmed that American educators appear to have reached a dead end in efforts to bring all students up to speed for today’s IT world.11 Even the experts who wrote the report showed their secret affection for Amglish by by committing a few glaring grammatical errors.
The bottom line is that Amglish is winning the language war. It is incumbent on teachers to recognize that fact and become more innovative. Some have found ways to play on student interest in slang to get them interested in learning seriously about language itself. One is Pamela Munro, professor of linguistics at UCLA. At the height of the Valley girl craze in 1989, she got her students to publish a dictionary of slang that has been republished every four years since then.
Among terms in the latest (2009) edition, U.C.L.A. Slang 6, were schwa, a synonym for wow, as an example of pulling new words out of thin air; verbal blends such as eargasm, the sensation of beautiful sound; bromance, love between two males; and shortened words such as presh for precious.
Another English professor who has become an expert on American slang is Connie Eble of the University of North Carolina. She says she specializes in “using the slang of my students to illustrate the forms and meanings of words and their histories.” As S. I. Hayakawa said, “Slang is the poetry of everyday life.”
Other lures to help language teachers reach out to today’s youngsters include music, money matters, and Internet commentary. Some have also used social networks to teach how to write concisely. But where are all the studies of innovative techniques to help other teachers adapt to today’s scene?
STREETS BECOME SCHOOLS
Is it any wonder why millions of youngsters learn their language arts in the streets, gyms, and playgrounds, especially in major cities, where the prevailing lingo is often set by African-American vernacular and Spanglish?
American black English was born when West African and Caribbean slaves hit the docks in England