Jae-hyun Im, Department of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education, Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Native-speakerism in the Expanding Circle and the Exclusion of African American Culture

A significant amount of research has pointed out the native-speakerism that has been deeply ingrained in English as a foreign language (EFL) education in the expanding circle, where English is rarely spoken for intranational communication but usually taught as a school subject in a test-oriented context. When taught within this context, it appears to embrace biased ideologies that tend to regard the culture of English as a native language (ENL) as norms to follow in learning and teaching English. This ideology is arguably realized by the strong preference for white Caucasian teachers in the job market, a hierarchical description of the Anglophone discourses in textbooks, and discriminative experiences of black English teachers.

What has been arguably missing in learning the linguistic and cultural diversity of the English-speaking countries, particularly America, is to include, but not limited to, African American culture. Despite its familiarity as experienced from a global pop culture and the presence of its localized form in many EFL countries, African American culture seems to have not been regarded as a useful pedagogical resource. Unlike American education that has actively discussed the ways to facilitate literacy education through hip-hop and African American cultural materials, extremely little research has been produced for English education in such EFL countries as Korea, Japan, and China. This lack of understanding of linguistic and cultural diversity might cause EFL teachers and learners to reproduce an ideology that can be prejudicially used to label a certain type of group of English speakers as superior or inferior.

As a Korean EFL learner and an English teacher trainer, I found that education may have played a small role in inviting African American culture to the Korean EFL classroom and in developing Korean English learners’ and teachers’ critical views on biased teaching practices toward race and language.

In this article, I would like to share my teacher training experiences where I sought to introduce the pedagogical values of hip-hop and African American culture to Korean EFL teachers and learners. Furthermore, this will allow for a discussion about the appropriateness of their use for English education in Korea. This narrative is based on my working experience as a part of an intensive Teaching English in English (TEE) program in Korea from 2015 to 2019. In this program, Korean EFL elementary school teachers participated during the summer break period.

My role was to introduce how hip-hop has been used for various educational purposes in the United States (US) and compare it with how it has been regarded as a resource for education in Korea, with a focus on literacy education. In addition, I introduced media sources from YouTube, movies, and Netflix series where Korean subtitles are available, which helped Korean EFL teachers to better understand the crux of the content.

Korean EFL Teachers’ Positive, Negative, and Neutral Stance

I have witnessed mixed attitudes from Korean elementary school English teachers toward inviting hip-hop and African American culture to Korean EFL education. Regarding the positive stance, those who find it pedagogically helpful to bring hip-hop and African American cultural materials proposed three reasons. First, it can be used as material to break the stereotype of hip-hop and African American culture as being violent, sensual, or inappropriate for education. They revealed that their lack of understanding about black culture coupled with the absence of first-hand experiences with African American speakers may have led to a misunderstanding of what African American culture represents. Second, several teachers found that hip-hop-based teaching practices were a novel approach to present the linguistic aspect of English. As song and chant are used for vocabulary teaching, presenting English words and expressions with a hip-hop beat was seen as another way of mnemonics. Third, hip-hop and video materials about African American historical figures can be new sources of learning materials to better understand American culture. These sources are intriguing and provide insightful views on the culture that might otherwise be rarely discussed and presented in a formal educational context. Many teachers indicated that though they may not give hip-hop music and African American movies to their students, the teachers themselves would be willing to consume these cultural materials in the future and actively seek more knowledge about the societal tensions in the US.

There were also negative voices regarding the use of hip-hop and African American cultural materials. Among the various reasons provided, two were most frequently mentioned. First, hip-hop, especially commercial hip-hop that can be easily consumed on mobile platforms, is usually inappropriate for young children. Violence and sexuality presented in the videos were the most salient reasons that made the teachers hesitate to use hip-hop for their teaching practice. Second, teachers had concerns about language standards. They shared the feeling that English education is always closely tied to many official exams at various stages of education, some of which may play a significant role in determining what their students’ future looks like. Teachers who were not willing to teach English through hip-hop were often worried about whether students who learned English through hip-hop would be unwelcomed in educational discourses in the future. They said because English tests always ask “correct” English, non-standard forms of English would be harmful to Korean EFL learners.

There were also “somewhere in between” stances among the teachers. They said using hip-hop and learning American culture through African American cultural videos would be a fascinating idea; however, they need more detailed and practical guidelines. Unlike other teaching methods in which there are manuals and online video guidelines available, there is extremely little research or resources for the teachers to depend on. This made teachers feel indifferent about the active employment of hip-hop and African American culture into their teaching syllabuses. Another opinion shared by the teachers was that it could be another “assignment” to do. In other words, in the situation that they already have many in- and out-of-class tasks and activities, the introduction to a new teaching philosophy could be burdensome.

What Can EFL Teachers Do with African American Cultural Materials? Calling for More Discussion

There has been extremely little research on the issue of hip-hop and African American culture for EFL education. Several voices, including myself, have argued for the inclusion of African American culture in teaching linguistic and cultural aspects of American English to partly promote critical approaches to TESOL (Im, 2020). However, as mentioned previously, it is still complex for EFL teachers to find resources for their teaching practice, let alone academic articles from which teachers can think of how to localize hip-hop-based English education.

This scant discussion with regard to the advantageousness of including hip-hop and African American culture in EFL educational discourses appears to have distanced us from identifying and recognizing what has been missing and what can be added to disrupt the status quo of EFL education. In the recent global pop culture flow, where hip-hop has become one of the most popular glocalized cultures, I strongly believe that researchers as well as teachers who are specialized in teaching EFL need to begin having conversations about what black culture can (or cannot) do for bilingual, multilingual, and translingual education in EFL contexts. From the teacher trainer perspective, I also would like to see more discussion on the practical application of hip-hop and African American culture for the purpose of teacher education as well as classroom teaching methods that should be welcomed by teachers, students, researchers, and teacher trainers in the Expanding Circle.

Regarding the question of how to use and where to focus, Canagarajah and Said (2010), for example, proposed three competencies that should be improved in ESL and EFL classroom: Language awareness, sociolinguistic sensitivity, and negotiation skills. To fulfill these goals, African American cultural contents can be helpful for both EFL teachers and learners to notice linguistic characteristics of African American English and the localized form of it in the East Asian pop culture discourse (Lee, 2011). Presenting English words and expressions on the hip-hop rhythm is also regarded as an effective way to retain vocabulary. Moreover, African American cultural contents can be used to develop sociolinguistic sensitivity by discussing how African American’s identity is tied to their own dialect and negotiated in the situation that asks them to use standard English. Furthermore, for improving negotiation skill, English teachers must be aware of what should not be spoken. By explicitly teaching racially and culturally sensitive expressions, EFL learners can become more careful with the spoken discourse. This method will prevent them not only from using general offensive curse words but racially sensitive expressions that learners might be easily exposed to through media. Without education, it is plausible to say that learners may not be knowledgeable about the negative connotation behind the expressions.

The suggestions above may or may not be appealing for those who teach and learn English in EFL contexts. The fact that there could be different positions with regards to the inclusion of hip-hop and African American culture in Korea (and possibly many other East Asian EFL contexts) should be understood as an opportunity to begin a lively discussion over its merits and demerits in various local contexts. More discussion will allow us to think of how to localize hip-hop-based education (Love, 2015) particularly for EFL teachers and learners for which various constructs including educational purposes, learners’ interests, language proficiency, modes of presentation, or teaching methods should be considered. Thus, each of them will be an interesting research topic.

References

Canagarajah, S., & Said, S. B. (2010). English language teaching in the outer and expanding circles. In J. Maybin., & J. Swann (Ed). The Routledge companion to English language studies (pp. 157-170). New York: Routledge.

Im, J. (2020). Teaching a part of American culture through hip-hop and African American videos: A media content analysis and teaching implications. STEM Journal, 21(2), 93-118.

Lee, J. S. (2011). Globalization of African American Vernacular English in popular culture: Blinglish in Korean Hip Hop. English World-Wide, 32(1), 1-23.

Love, B. L. (2015). What is hip-hop-based education doing in nice fields such as early childhood and elementary education? Urban Education, 50(1), 106-131.

This paper is a result of the TESOL-BMEIS webinar hosted on December 10, 2020. To watch the webinar, please go to https://youtu.be/WjMj3LAd7E8