An Emergence of English Language Variety in Cambodia

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An Emergence of English Language Variety in
Cambodia

• The 12th ESEA Conference Trends and Directions
• Presenter Keuk Chan Narith
• RUPP/ IFL English Department

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An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia

• Purposes of the paper
• to seek preliminary understanding of features of
  Cambodian people and learners language
• to investigate causes which encourage to such
  features
• to examine intelligibility of English language
  used in this country to foreigners, native or
  non-native speakers of English language and
• to discuss alternatives for improving English
  language training in Cambodia.

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An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia

• Background information
• The history of English language spread into
  Cambodia
• - before civil war (1975) French was a dominant
  foreign language in Cambodia due to French
  colonization (1863-1954) English was little
  learnt and spoken in the American colonization
  (1970-1975).

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An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia

• - after Genocidal regime (1980late 1980s)
  English and French were prohibited Russian and
  Vietnamese were taught in schools.
• - UNTAC (1990s) English became a dominant
  foreign language. In mid 1990s, the Royal
  Government of Cambodia declared English and
  French as foreign languages in Cambodia.

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An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia

• Needs of English language
• - living survival
• - higher education
• - diplomatic relationship
• - seeking residency abroad

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An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia

• English language training
• In addition to formal training of teachers of
  English sponsored by AUSAIDS, a huge number of
  private/ informal English language classes were
  opened. In this situation, the Khmer people who
  have known English better would teach the ones
  who dont English language.

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An Emergence of English language variety in
Cambodia

• Literature review
• Kirkpatrick (2005)s study for International
  seminar at RELC
• The added /s/ sound at the end of the words
  spoken by Cambodian could be seen as another
  expanding circle or learner features of English
  language.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Stern (1997)
• In order to study a language variety in one
  country, ones must study the language that
  learners produce, which he calls as interlanguage
  studies.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Littlewood (1994) constructivist view
• Second or foreign language learners, similar
  to children of their first language, are actively
  constructing rules of the target language they
  are exposed to and gradually adapting these rules
  in order to form the target language system.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Ellis (1996) Cognitive processing
• - noticing
• - comparing
• - integrating
• - restructuring

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Framework of the study
• Littlewood (1997)s suggestion
• 1) Language transfer
• The learners use their previous native language
  experience as a means of organizing the second
  language.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• 2) Overgeneralization
• The majority of intralingual errors are
  instances of the same process of
  overgeneralization that has been observed in
  first language acquisition.
• ?Learners use their previous knowledge of the
  second or foreign language that they use to
  generalize the target language systems.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• 3) Non-standard errors
• The assumption is that the speech which
  learners produce is a direct reflection of the
  rules which they have internalized, that is, of
  their underlying competence in the second or
  foreign language.
• Two factors for discussion
• - immediate communication strategies
• - performance factors

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• 4) Errors due to the effects of teaching
• If a learner is taking part in formal
  instruction, some errors will be a direct result
  of misunderstanding caused by faulty teaching or
  materials.
• - Material uses
• - The effectiveness of teaching

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Method
• - Qualitative analyses of the recorded materials
  in forms of interviews, group discussions,
  learners presentations and other means of
  communication and written materials offered by
  his students.
• - Participants year-two students at RUPP,
  Institute of Foreign Languages, English Dept. and
  2 Australian, 1 American, 1 Swedish, and 1
  Singaporean.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Findings Conclusion
• One major problem is phonological features.
• - Learners mistress English words.
• - Learners mispronounce /ð/, and /d/ /?/, /?/,
  and /s/ /z/ and /?/.
• - Learners do not pronounce the ending
• sounds of words.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• yes main problems for Khmer people who speak
  English is that therere two problems for Khmer
  speakers one is intonation. So you talk about in
  Khmer you say table, this is a table no
  stress. In English we say Table, so we stress
  ta and we go down on ble. Another one is that
  Khmer do not pronounce clearly the end of the
  words. when I first came here I never knew what
  they said because I never heard the end of the
  words. I cant understand what they said, said
  an American teacher who has been working in
  Cambodia for four years.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• - Learners tend to pronounce /s/ at the end of
  words adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, etc.
• Ex. In an interview 3
• Yes. In fact the study always have a difficulty
  but er- in er- my study in IFL I face some of
  problems such as er- er- manys documents I
  have to reads mores such er- more such for
  example I have tos search for mores books for
  develop myself but I think I dont have enough
  time for me to work ands study at the same time.
  (s means the speaker dropped ending sound).

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• ?Some of these features are caused by
  non-equivalence in the two languages in
  phonological propositions in the form of language
  transfer and overgeneralization of the target
  language.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• A second major problem is the features caused by
  language transfer. It is affected by learners
  experience in the native language and knowledge
  of other languages they know and use.
• - Culturally, Khmer language and Khmer culture
  do affect English language learning.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Ex. One obvious feature of English language which
  is not found in Khmer language is article (a, an,
  and the).
• Khmer learners of English language may
  interchangeably use a, an and the, or they may
  not use these articles at all. Lets look into
  the extract of one university learners
  introduction of a reflection paper.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• A short story, An Incident, was given me a
  valuable of life of human being after I read it.
  The story was set in China more than fifty years
  ago. The incident was happened at ? South Gate
  during the winter of 1917 when ? rickshaw man was
  hired for taking a rich man to ? South Gate.
  Suddenly, when ? old woman crossing the road, she
  had left the pavement without warning to cut
  across in front of the rickshaw. The main actor
  is ? rickshaw man who is the kindly gentleman.
  Another people are ? old woman, ? police man and
  ? man who is hiring the rickshaw, ? rich man. (9
  articles were dropped)

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Another major problem is caused by the learners
  immediate needs to use English language to
  achieve some communicative purposes.
• - Beginners, or less competent people or
  learners attempt to speak English language for
  their living survivals and communication.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Ex. One student sent his message to his lecturer
  for his late submission of his assignment
• Thanks, lecturer for your apology. I submit my
  assignment late.
• This learner got the wrong lexical choice of
  apology for forgiveness or just permission.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Another major problem is caused by teaching.
• - Materials available in Cambodia for English
  language teaching and learning.
• - American English-made materials
• - British English-made materials
• - Other English-made materials writers in
  Singapore, Philippines, Indian.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Intelligibility
• - An American teacher, who has been teaching
  English for 4 years in Cambodia, found it hard to
  understand Cambodian people, esp. his students
  English language because the dropping of ending
  sounds of words.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• An Australian teacher, who has stayed in Cambodia
  or five months, noticed that English spoken in
  Cambodia is similar to English in other Southeast
  Asia countries. She added that Cambodian people
  do attempt to communicate, to speak English. She
  could understand it quite well.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• - Another Australian teacher had problem with the
  sounds its difficult to distinguish between
  thing, sing, etc.
• - A Singaporean teacher, working as a teacher in
  the Teacher Attachment Program, found a bit
  difficult at the beginning to understand each
  other in the classes. It took him one or two
  sessions.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• - An advisor to English language learning and
  teaching, a Swedish professor, spent quite a long
  time to understand her students essays. She
  pointed out that Khmer students used on the
  other hand to add more ideas, rather than to
  contrast their previous arguments.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Discussion
• In terms of intelligibility, Smith (1997) suggest
  that people who involve in communication in the
  target language should try to make themselves
  intelligible, comprehensible, and interpretable
  to their interlocutors.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• Communicative strategies should be used to foster
  communication and/or refresh communication
  breakdown.
• Learners should have been exposed to such
  communicative strategies and English language
  varieties, esp. Englishes in Southeast Asian
  countries to reduce miscommunication in the
  target language.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• More studies should be done in Cambodia in order
  to explore in-depth features of English language
  (interlanguage) adopted by Cambodian learners and
  people.
• Another research should also look into how much
  intelligible and comprehensible Cambodian
  learners English language is, ane when
  communication breaks up, how Cambodian speakers
  refresh it to bring success in communication.

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An Emergence of English language Variety in
Cambodia

• The observation and investigation into teachers
  and learners attitude to English language
  variety in Cambodia should be conducted so that
  any attention and measure should be developed to
  strengthen the quality of and redirect ways of
  English language teaching and learning.

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Reference

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• 2. Cook, G. 2003. Applied Linguistics. Oxford
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• 3. Crystal, David. 1997. English as a Global
  Language. Cambridge CUP
• 4. Gumperz, J., J. 1997. Interactional
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  Coupland, N. and A. Jaworski, eds.
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• 5. Kachru, Braj, ed. 1992. The Other Tongue
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• 6. Littlewood, W., T. 1994. Foreign and Second
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• Thank you!