This article is a product of a postdissertation writing process. I consider it very important for me, a second language writer, to use writing as a tool for self-expression. I wrote this personal account as a reflection on my shifting position within English hegemony. In retrospect, I could see how each episode of the colonial self-marginalizing discourse was constructed inside of me. No matter how hard I tried to contest it, such a construct has existed deep within me over the course of my life. The self-reflection presented here raises awareness of how self-marginalization can be embedded in past experiences—both inside and outside of English classrooms. This type of postcolonial construct is subtle yet dreadfully powerful as a cultural ideology.

The episodes presented below are of paramount importance as they opened up a space for me to reclaim my agency. Central to the development of the episodes is an opportunity to see that I was not conquered by internalized colonial discourse; rather, by means of loyalty to my own endeavors and a series of subtle steps along my own path, I reached a point of self-actualization and self-fulfillment that ultimately occurred as I became a contributing member of academic society. In the episodes that follow, I present a series of metaphorical straw men (symbols of internalized colonial discourse) and then knock them down with descriptions of the enlightenment I experienced.

1987: “EXEMPTED” ENGLISH, BANGKOK

In high school, I was a bookworm; I ate less in order to save my allowance to buy books. One of the books I hated to read but needed to buy was a TOEFL vocabulary pocket book. Day and night, I memorized words and more words. Because of that effort, I passed a national entrance examination to enter a renowned university located in Bangkok. On the basis of that test, I was exempted from taking two introductory English classes. Ironically, I did not even know what “exempted” meant until a friend, who got much lower scores in English than I did, brought the term to light. At any rate, I was proud of my English; drilling TOEFL vocabulary into my head every day seemed to pay off.

For decades, I did not realize that I carried a markedly naïve view of English with me. I did not realize that by trying to fit into Bangkokian culture, I had become blind to the real body and soul of the city. Like the United States, Bangkok might be one of the dream lands for both short-term and long-term immigrants from Thailand’s villages. It is the hub where we see social classes crash into one another softly; social inequality functions in a leisurely way, in a shadow. Here, Thai people marginalize one another every single minute by the cars they drive, the watches they wear, the dialect they speak, and the English language they know. Discriminatory practices seem to prevail everywhere.

1988: A LINGUISTIC INTERN

On an oven-like afternoon, I walked into a “thrilling-like-television” episode of my student life: an English grammar course. In that class, students were introduced to the analysis of sentence structures. Day in and day out, we parsed sentences into bits and pieces as if we were on a mission to find a new kind of disease in the sentential skeletons; we were not different from medical students eager to diagnose our first artificial patient. As a member of that investigative unit, I thought the teacher must be crazy. Bored, I did not pay much attention to what the teacher taught but instead questioned her accented English. As classmates in her course, we traded gossip: “Is this the kind of English teacher we have here? Oh dear!?”

I did not realize that such forensic grammatical analysis would be rewarding in a later period of my life. Moreover, never did I realize that the episode of this teacher’s life and our gossip about her accent would be repeated―not about her, but about me―in decades to come in another English classroom—a different site.

1988: THE SAME OVEN

During another steamy semester, I dropped out of my first English writing course for fear of getting an F. The first three returned essays were painted with the teacher’s red pen―a “discriminatory” device, I thought. I felt lost in an English academy; I did not know who I could turn to. Frightened, I decided to silently announce a cold war with that writing teacher. From that moment on, I perceived all English writing courses as academic jails, and I allowed all writing teachers to paralyze me before they even showed up in the classroom.

I did not realize that the magic of drilling TOEFL words into my head had worn off, and the memorization trick had failed me. The English placement test had fooled me: I knew vocabulary, but I could not write.

1989: THE SAME OLD OVEN

A rural girl, I hated myself when I could not speak fluent English like my classmates who came from international high schools, who were raised abroad, and who were people we rural students wanted to be. So, I found a language laboratory and used it as my sanctuary; repeating dialogues with a tape recorder made me forget reality outside the lab for a while. On those lonely days, what I drilled in my head was not English but a phobia about it. I gradually learned to avoid writing classes and turned the lab into my permanent asylum.

Whenever the teacher assigned students to staff this room, they might not have expected that the laboratory would be used in the way I used it. They may not even have imagined the real meaning hidden behind a tape recorder rather than a language drilling place.

1991-1999: BUSINESS ENGLISH—THE MONEY-MAKING MACHINE

Right after graduation, I started my first job at a Japanese manufacturing firm. Every time I was on a business trip to Singapore, I wished I could speak in Thai to articulate my thoughts. I hated it when the local business partners equated my broken English with my business ability; I hated it when those who were once colonized by others turned to colonization themselves.

At home, I unintentionally marginalized other Thais who did not know English. Abroad, I felt marginalized by others who seemed to think they spoke “better” English than I did.

2002: A FROG IN A FREEZER, USA

A decade later, I joined the TESOL enterprise in an American-dream land, where I stepped outside my culture and saw myself, for the first time, from a different perspective. Here, my accented English stood out. I struggled, yet I allowed myself to project my accent and to make sense out of my differences through writing. Exploring myself, I learned to take my background seriously, made use of the Thai values hidden in me, and then wrote a paper with an organic voice. Before handing it in to professors, I asked my American classmates to proofread it without editing grammar; although it sounded deviant from standard English, it was understandable. The reason I did this was to allow my voice heard the way it was supposed to be.

At this point, I still did not know much about the TESOL discipline, but it was the first time that I did not feel obliged to conform to conventions of professional writing. In this way, I saw room to stay free from the standard norms of language use. Writing organically, I had developed and found my own voice in writing.

2004: A SUMMER BREEZE, PENNSYLVANIA

I gradually learned to validate the raw materials of my childhood, turning episodes of my struggles and poverty into meaningful written pieces. I recognized that cooking writing from such materials allowed me to make meaningful contributions. In a composition class, it was the first time I was introduced to the creative writing genre. In the workshops, I wrote “My Life Is C+” the way I never thought I could make it happen. With the constructive guidance from the teacher and peers, I felt the process of writing this piece not only eradicated my fear of writing but put me in a different position—a place where I knew I could write.

At the end of the semester, I was truly into a personal writing approach. (“My Life Is C+” was accepted for publication by Humanising Language Teaching Magazine. It is now available online at www.hltmag.co.uk/oct10/stud.htm.)

2004: AUTUMN, FALLING LEAVES, FALLING SELF

My confidence in expressive writing as an empowerment tool for individuals was challenged at the beginning of the semester. In response to submitting expressive writing in a class where expository writing was expected, I was referred to as being inappropriate by one of my composition professors. Knowing vocabulary but not the processes of writing, I had to find a way to learn academic conventions quickly. Whereas other students in the class had learned these conventions much earlier, I was in the uncomfortable position of learning them at that point in adult life and under time constraints. So, I decided to mimic the writing style of a journal article word for word, paragraph by paragraph; I felt like a copy machine made in Thailand. A twinge of pain from the college writing class in Bangkok returned. I hated being in that class; a gigantic moth drummed in my stomach before I stepped into the classroom. In my mind, I perceived the classroom to be a jail, but I left it with a B grade. Although B is a good grade, I was unable to accept it and felt ideologically naked.

It took me years to kill that moth.

2006: A DAWN OF UNDERSTANDING

In the last part of my program of study, I was introduced to the concept of World Englishes. Retrospectively, I remembered my English learning experience back home. Suddenly, I was in my Thai teachers’ shoes―I realized that I had learned to value their endeavor in teaching, and I felt guilty for my prejudice against them on the issue of the Thai accent. In particular, I thought of the teacher of that 1998 grammar class. In my teacher’s shoes, I felt her burden; I touched her pain; I regretted. Here, I came to deeply understand how patient my English teachers had to be with their students and how much pride they had to swallow for being nonnative English teachers. This World Englishes concept was reminiscent of my undergraduate classmates who spoke fluent English like farangs (native speakers). To this point, it was the first time in my life that I did not hate myself for not being able to speak fluent English like they did. Most important, it was the first time I learned to appreciate my accented English, seeing myself beyond an accent boundary.

I then realized that although writing was always a struggle in my life, my attitude toward it had shifted a great deal. Ultimately, the best way to move forward was learning how to navigate registers of language use and situate my English within particular genres of writing.

2007: RESEARCH IN THE HEAT WAVE, BANGKOK

I returned to the same oven-like metropolis to conduct my first research project. Twenty professional Thai writers with diverse English writing experiences had offered me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from them. I embarked on the first interview with high hope; I left the research field with contradictory emotions: frustration and disappointment. I wondered if my attempt to explore Thai English would bear any fruit, and I felt isolated in my awareness of self-colonizing discourse I had achieved thus far.

2008: THEN AND THERE

Undertaking this critical self-examination has allowed me to trace how my self-marginalization emerged and developed. Looking back, I reconstructed the meaning of each episode in my life. This allowed me to become self-aware and see how deep the self-marginalization was running within me.

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE?

Now, I am home, teaching second-language college writing. Presumably, some participants may often equate my accent with my level of competence and knowledge of English, and they might exchange some of the same gossip that I did as a student. However, now, I understand that such attitudes are not created overnight. At the same time, I understand that these attitudes can be understood as manifestations of the way we Thais learn and teach English. Indeed, our perceptions of English can be understood as the root of the imperial construct.

In order to teach English as a language of culture, not as a tool of imperialism, I must first address the issue of self-marginalization and construct a metaphorical space in which I am a postcolonialist and informed educator of the English language. To construct this space successfully, it seems best to acknowledge my own loyalty to my endeavors and affirm my own success in reaching a point of self-actualization and self-fulfillment which occurred as I became a contributing and self-governing member of academic society. In order to work effectively as an agent of postcolonial ideology and self-governance, it seems I must first secure a sense of self-agency that has been historically subdued by the internalized discourse of colonial ideology. Then, with this new way of thinking that leads to self-empowerment, I can provide suitable leadership and illuminate the pathway to understanding, self-agency, and self-governance for my students.

One day, I hope my students will leave their classrooms with the simple concept that they can appreciate English as a language of culture and democracy, but they need not be subdued by it as a language of social hierarchy. English should not be understood as a master but rather as an art through which multiple cultures are manifested and as a tool to enhance self-expression and cross-cultural communication.

Where to go from here? The guiding answer lies in two questions that are simultaneously political, ideological, and pedagogical:

How does one teach and learn English as a language for self-expression?

and

How does one not teach and learn English blindly?

Dr. Adcharawan Buripakdi, ajarngob@gmail.com, is a faculty member of the English Program, School of Liberal Arts, Walailak University, Thailand. Her research interests include World Englishes, postcolonial discourse, L2 writing, and minority and language rights.