WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 Thanks everyone for coming. Some of my students and some other people. 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:10.000 So the topic is global learning, bringing the world to WOU students. 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:15.000 That's pretty general. There's a lot that we could cover. 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:20.000 So I'm gonna start with some bigger ideas but then we're going to get down to some linguistics. 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:24.000 Because I'm a linguist and we're going to do some linguistics. 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:27.000 So by way of introduction 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:32.000 if you're in one of my classes you probably know this but most of you are not. 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:41.000 I grew up in Oregon. For the first half of my life I was not the poster-child for globalization. 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:43.000 I grew up in Amity, Oregon. 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:48.000 I did my bachelor's degree here at Western Oregon University. 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:54.000 I graduated with a teaching degree and I went back and I was a high school English teacher at Amity, Oregon. 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:57.000 And I did my master's degree here at Western. 00:00:57.000 --> 00:00:63.000 And so it wasn't until I was about 25 that I started traveling abroad. 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:08.000 Three or four week vacations, backpacking through different countries. 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:11.000 And then after I finished my master's degree 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:18.000 I left Amity High School and I went to Egypt. I taught for a year in Cairo. 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:24.000 I taught high school English at an international school in Cairo. And after that I went to Thailand for seven years. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:28.000 The first half of that time 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:32.000 I was teaching at an international school. The second half I was working on my PhD at Chulalongkorn University. 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:42.000 Those experiences living abroad gave me the opportunity to travel a lot in nearby countries. 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:48.000 And now as a linguist I study how English is used around the world 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:52.000 and I go to international conferences. 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:56.000 I have colleagues in several countries that I communicate with regularly. 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:60.000 So all of that internationalization 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:05.000 really happened because of my experiecne at Western Oregon University. 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:09.000 To begin kind of broad, at Western, 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:15.000 we recently worked on revising our strategic plan. 00:02:15.000 --> 00:02:20.000 And that includes the mission of the University and our values. 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:24.000 If I click on this link it will take me to this page. 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:28.000 So you can go and look at the University mission, values, and purpose. 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:32.000 So there's the mission. 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:36.000 Especially under values 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:40.000 there are several values listed. Accessibility, accountability, collaboration. 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:44.000 community, diversity and respect, empowerment, excellence, sustainability and stewardship. 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:48.000 So I'm particularly interested in two of those. 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:52.000 Community and diversity and respect. 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:56.000 So our mission and our values are guided by 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:60.000 these values in community. Trustworthy, caring, safe environment 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:04.000 for the cultivation of peace, civility, and social justice, 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:09.000 connections extending beyond the classroom, across campus, and into our local and global communities. 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:12.000 And then diversity and respect. 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:16.000 Equity and inclusion, a fundamental basis in human diversity, 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:18.000 appreciation for the complexity of world, 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:24.000 strength drawn from our variety of backgrounds, abilities, cultural experiences, identities, 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:26.000 knowledge, domains, and means of expression. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:34.000 So just to kind of get everybody here thinking in similar ways 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:40.000 I want us to consider a couple of questions. One, what is a global community? 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:42.000 I mean if we look at this we can see, 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:46.000 we have communities extending beyond the classroom, across campus, 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:52.000 that's easy to understand, the campus community is everyone who is involved in the campus. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:56.000 Our local community, including Monmouth and Independence. 00:03:56.000 --> 00:03:59.000 But what is global community? 00:03:59.000 --> 00:03:60.000 And then, 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:07.000 And then there's pretty good definition of diversity here. 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:12.000 But why should we respect diversity? What's the rationale for that? 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:14.000 Maybe it's not necessary. 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:19.000 So I'm gonna give all of you a couple of minutes. It's gonna be about five minutes. 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:21.000 Maybe talk with the person next to you. 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:28.000 And come up with an answer to this question: What is a global community? 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:30.000 And why should we respect diversity? OK? 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:37.000 So it's 6:05, I'll give you five minutes to discuss that and then I'll write down some answers on the paper over there. 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:44.000 So I sense kind of a lull have you guys come up some ideas? 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:48.000 So question number one, what is global community? 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:52.000 Yeah. Everyone involved everywhere in the world. 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:07.000 OK. So how does that happen? 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:12.000 Everyone everywhere might be a little bit of an exaggeration. 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:16.000 But a lot of people in a lot of places is definitely reasonable. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:19.000 How does that happen? Yeah. 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:22.000 We were talking about social media. 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:36.000 Technology has definitely changed globalization. 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:38.000 We are a much smaller planet because of it. 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:44.000 Yeah. Global industries, so companies spreading across the nations and countries. 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:58.000 Global flows of goods, people, products, services, information. 00:05:58.000 --> 00:05:61.000 Yeah that's very significant. 00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:05.000 Any other ideas? What is a global community? 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:15.000 Does that capture it? Everybody everywhere involved. I like the word involved. 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:22.000 Because it's not just connected. Involved has a sense of doing something together, of communicating. 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:25.000 So why should we respect diversity? 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:28.000 Any ideas? 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:30.000 Yeah. We can learn from others. 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:44.000 Great, great answer. Anybody else? Yeah. 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:46.000 We can help each other out. 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:60.000 OK you guys are my kind of crowd. Anything else? 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:07.000 Sue. I would say diversity makes our communities stronger, better able to do more things. 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:19.000 So you can kind of see how these two lead to this. 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:24.000 When we learn from each other when we help each other, our communities are stronger. 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:27.000 I'll leave it at that. That's a great place to start. 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:32.000 I was going to show you this as you were brainstorming but I kind of forgot. 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:35.000 This is a timeline of world history 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:38.000 starting from about 3000 BC. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:42.000 And so you can see there's Ancient Egypt, 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:46.000 and then the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:49.000 and then here we are today. 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:58.000 Superimposed on the top of this timeline of world history is a graph of world population. 00:07:58.000 --> 00:07:69.000 And actually this is not to scale. The seven billion would be about double the height of what you see here for it to be to scale. 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:16.000 So does that make you think of your answers here in a different way? 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:22.000 How can thinking of world history and the rise of nation states 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:27.000 all these individual nation states and the rise of population, 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:33.000 how does that make global community and respect for diversity more significant to us? 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:41.000 Yeah. Well the more that we learned about technology and what not, 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:46.000 the more we advanced and learned about each other, the more we had to live with each other. 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:49.000 The more we have to live with each other, yeah. 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:57.000 This rise in population makes it imperative that we learn to live together better. 00:08:57.000 --> 00:08:60.000 There are seven billion of us. 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:04.000 And that has happened in about the last 200 years. 00:09:05.000 --> 00:09:12.000 This chart which is very similar, this is actually a chart of the growth of my household. 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:13.000 It's very similar, isn't it? 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:18.000 So this was me for my adult bachelor life. 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:24.000 And then I got married, and then we had kids. You'll notice it's kind of the same curve. 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:27.000 I originally meant that kind of as a joke. 00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:36.000 But I thought about it and you know, any family that grows with a couple of kids or people moving in, 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:39.000 is going to experience some growing pains. 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:45.000 They're going to have to learn how to live with each other and that's what we're experiencing on a global level. 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:56.000 In addition to our values reflecting values in community and a respect for diversity, 00:09:56.000 --> 00:09:58.000 we also have undergraduate learning outcomes. 00:09:58.000 --> 00:09:62.000 And one of those learning outcomes is diversity, 00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:05.000 which is intercultural knowledge and competency and global learning. 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:11.000 So these are things that we expect students to get from a general education at Western. 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:17.000 But I'm really more concerned with some nuts and bolts. 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:25.000 While it's essential to endorse global community, diversity, and respect at a larger, administrative, policy level, 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:33.000 promoting an idea writing a mission statement is kind of like sitting in an office looking out at the world. 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:38.000 What I'm more interested in is how we engage in interaction 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:43.000 that leads people to perceive and understand the world from a different perspective. 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:45.000 So as a linguist, 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:51.000 I'm interested in some of the nuts and bolts of how we understand each other when we're communicating. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:55.000 And especially when we communicate with people who are different. 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:60.000 There's a great article that came out just last week 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:05.000 in the Chronicle of Higher Education called Seek Out Strangers. 00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:15.000 Dan Everett by the way is at the center of one of the biggest linguistic controversies of probably the last 20 years. 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:21.000 Probably one of the biggest controversies in linguistics since the 1950s and 60s, the Chomskyan Revolution. 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:25.000 But I'm not going to go into that. I could go into that forever but I'm not going to. 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:29.000 I'm just going to read the first paragraph and a little bit of the third. 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:36.000 So this is what Dan Everett, a linguist who has for years lived in other countries studying other languages, 00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:42.000 he says in a Piraha village, along the Maici River in Brazil, 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:45.000 I squeezed mustard onto a piece of bread. 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:48.000 An old woman from the village watched me. 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:50.000 Why do you eat bird crap? she asked. 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:53.000 There was irritation in her voice. 00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:56.000 Then I looked at her more closely. 00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:61.000 My curious inquirer was sucking the brains out of a roasted rat head. 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:06.000 That's the kind of thing that linguists abroad deal with. I don't have to deal with these things. 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:09.000 There was novelty in what we were seeing. 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:16.000 Diverse perspectives. We had stumbled upon the necessary condition for all learning. 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:19.000 Jump down to the fourth paragraph. 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:24.000 This principle of learning applies to conceptual and cultural learning as well. 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:28.000 It is harder to learn things from people like ourselves. 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:31.000 Say someone who grew up with us in our neighborhood, 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:33.000 from our ethnic background and our gender, 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:37.000 we already know most of what each other knows. 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:44.000 That gets exactly to this reason for respecting diversity. We can learn from others 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:48.000 because people who are different from us can teach us. 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:56.000 So please take that article home and read the whole thing. It's only four pages, it's fast to read, it's entertaining. 00:12:56.000 --> 00:12:58.000 It's a great article. 00:12:58.000 --> 00:12:65.000 It's by a linguist, I'm a linguist. I studied linguistics at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:08.000 I mainly studied what we call world Englishes. 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:15.000 And that's the way English has spread around the globe in the last few hundred years 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:18.000 and been adapted to different places. 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:24.000 One of the most well-known theories related to this is Braj Kachru's circles of English. 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:30.000 So we have what's called the inner circle of English. These are countries where English has been for a long time. 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:36.000 There's standard English used in these places. The United States, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand. 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:41.000 We have our own recognized international dialects and versions of English. 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:43.000 Then there's the outer circle. 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:47.000 These are places where English has an official status. 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:50.000 English is an official language in all of these countries. 00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:54.000 And if you go the Philippines and you go to a movie, 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:59.000 if you see a Hollywood movie in the theater, which there are plenty of theaters and Hollywood movies, it's in English. 00:13:59.000 --> 00:13:64.000 It's not dubbed or translated to Tagalog. 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:09.000 In Singapore there are four official languages. 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:12.000 So English is very common in these countries. 00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:16.000 The expanding circle is basically the rest of the world. 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:24.000 Everywhere where English is learned as a foreign language. So China, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia. 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:29.000 There are many theories related to world Englishes. 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:37.000 And I'm not going to go into them. But we could look at here's world standard English and then here's American standard. 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:41.000 And in the United States you know we have several varieties of English we have Southern English, 00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:45.000 African American Vernacular, Chicano English. 00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:48.000 Canada has different versions of English. 00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:57.000 If you go to the Caribbean, different countries in the Caribbean have different varieties of English. 00:14:57.000 --> 00:14:61.000 And there's other models. You could look at the features of different Englishes. 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:05.000 I'm not going to go into these, but that's part of what I studied in my PhD work. 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:13.000 What I'm really interested in today and what I want to talk with you guys about is comprehending different accents. 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:17.000 Most of us have spoken to somebody who has an accent. 00:15:17.000 --> 00:15:19.000 Actually we all have accents. 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:25.000 When we think about comprehending accents we have to start with some general shared ideas 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:30.000 like one, we all speak with a regional or social dialect or accent. 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:37.000 We all vary our pronunciation, word choice, and grammar depending on the situation, right? Who we're talking to. 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:44.000 Two, there's something called speech accommodation theory, developed by Howard Giles since the 1970s. 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:47.000 And he talks about, and has researched in this area since then, 00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:52.000 convergence, over-accommodation, and divergence. The most interesting thing is convergence. 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:57.000 Take two people who speak in different ways and put them together. 00:15:57.000 --> 00:15:66.000 If they want to communicate, they will subconsciously each alter the way they speak to speak more like the other person. 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:09.000 Their speech will converge 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:16.000 in ways that they are sometimes consciously aware of and sometimes not consciously aware of. 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:23.000 And so there's also times when they diverge. When someone wants to really express their identity through speech, 00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:29.000 they might maintain an accent or emphasize an accent that's different from the other person to express difference. 00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:35.000 But often, it's convergence, right? They come together. 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:40.000 And one of the major factors is their attitudes. 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:42.000 How much what they think about the other person 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:48.000 and their attitude toward that accent or that person's ethnicity or their social class. And the context. 00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:53.000 And there's a long tradition of research on accent discrimination. 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:61.000 Listeners often evaluate second language users, accented speech, negatively. There's a lot of research supporting that. 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:08.000 So we're going to do a little bit of linguistic work. I'm going to teach you a little bit about Hong Kong English. 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:12.000 The English widely used in Hong Kong. 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:17.000 And so we're going to listen to a speaker a few times 00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:21.000 and try to train our ears a little bit to understand a different accent. 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:24.000 And then we'll take a little test. Not a real test. 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:29.000 And then we'll try a different passage with some blanks in the transcript for you to fill in. 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:33.000 So first I'm going to play the recording. 00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:36.000 So this is a female from Hong Kong. 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:38.000 She's going to talk for about a minute. 00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:42.000 And we'll just listen once to kind of get a sense for what she's talking about. 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:48.000 And then I'll give you the transcript of what she says and we'll listen again. 00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:52.000 We'll identify some of the words that are pronounced differently. 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:54.000 And talk about them a little bit. 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:60.000 And then we'll try a new passage and see if you've gotten better at understanding a different version of English. 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:02.000 So let's listen first. 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:54.000 I know that goes pretty fast. 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:62.000 When I did this in my office I was able to stop it and replay little pieces. 00:19:02.000 --> 00:19:10.000 So did you notice any words that you think were pronounced differently? 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:22.000 Yeah most of us would say, people who go live in another country, they are? 00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:25.000 Expatriates. I don't know. 00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:32.000 Yeah. Anybody else want to say it? The word that's here. 00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:35.000 How would you pronounce that word? 00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:44.000 Expatriates? I think the typical American pronunciation would be expatriates. 00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:47.000 Her pronunciation was a little bit different. 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:51.000 OK. Anything else you noticed? 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:56.000 Secondary and multilingual, she said those two words funny. 00:19:56.000 --> 00:19:58.000 OK a little bit different. 00:19:58.000 --> 00:19:64.000 I'm going to play it one more time. This time I'm going to tell you some words to listen for. 00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.000 In about the third sentence, 00:20:09.000 --> 00:20:14.000 the one that says like you I thought it was. The word it's. 00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:19.000 And then in the next line the word years. 00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:24.000 And "the", and the next line, the word what's. 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:26.000 And the next line the word lost. 00:20:26.000 --> 00:20:32.000 And the next line teachers, and we have expatriates. 00:20:32.000 --> 00:20:37.000 A couple lines later, situation, think. 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:42.000 And in the last sentence fact and person. 00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:48.000 So now listen again and pay particular attention to those words. 00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:53.000 So did anybody recognize some patterns there? 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:56.000 Was it like when there's an "s" and a "t" together? 00:20:56.000 --> 00:20:61.000 So when there's an "s" and "t" at the end of the word, what happens? 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:13.000 The word what's, comes out like, wus. 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:18.000 So the "t" is dropped. 00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:22.000 At the risk of people not knowing what I'm doing I'm going to write in IPA. 00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:39.000 What we would pronounce as "what's," is wus. 00:21:39.000 --> 00:21:44.000 What about it's? The word it's? 00:21:46.000 --> 00:21:53.000 Iss, yeah it was more like iss instead of it's. 00:21:56.000 --> 00:21:57.000 Fact? 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.000 No "t", fack. 00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:11.000 More like fack. 00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:18.000 Lost was more like loss. 00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:24.000 So one very common feature of Hong Kong English 00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:28.000 is that final consonant clusters are reduced. 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:33.000 So if there's consonant sounds that are in a row at the end of a word 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:36.000 often the speaker will only say one of those sounds. 00:22:36.000 --> 00:22:38.000 And so one of them is just not pronounced. 00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:41.000 And there's various reasons for that that I won't get into. 00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:45.000 Also the word person. 00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:55.000 What was going on with the words person, teacher, forced, and similar? 00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:11.000 The "r" is not pronounced. 00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:16.000 Person, teacher, forced, similar. 00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:22.000 Hong Kong English due to the British influence is non-rhotic. 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:31.000 That means that an in the UK, Hong Kong English speakers only pronounce the "r" if there's a vowel after it. 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:37.000 So there's no vowel after these r's. So it's not pronounced. 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:43.000 These are systematic regularities in Hong Kong English. 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:52.000 And then you also see in the word secondary, in secondary the "r" is there because it's followed by a vowel, 00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:60.000 but we would pronounce the word secondary with stress on the first syllable. Secondary. 00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:07.000 Due also to some British influence, there's a vowel at the end that's dropped and its more like second'ry. 00:24:07.000 --> 00:24:11.000 Instead of secondary, second'ry. Second'ry. 00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:16.000 It's like British, instead of laboratory they say laborat'ry. 00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:20.000 second'ry, and same with expatriates becomes 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.000 expatr'ates. 00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:28.000 So do those differences seem 00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:32.000 more apparent now? I hope so. It's a little bit of an explanation. 00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:36.000 So let's try it. Turn over your paper or go to page 00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:40.000 two if you have it. 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.000 So it's the same speaker, and I want you to try to 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:48.000 fill in the blanks with the missing words and we'll see how you do. 00:24:48.000 --> 00:24:52.000 Well, English as a subject to me is just like 00:24:52.000 --> 00:24:56.000 part of the game, you know. If you want to survive, if you want to 00:24:56.000 --> 00:24:60.000 like lead a life that 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.000 will allow you to move up the social ladder. 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:08.000 When I was young I already realized that you actually have to speak 00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:12.000 good English. Why I say so, because I recall that 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:16.000 I have many classmates who were very brilliant learners, 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:20.000 great in arts, music, what have you, or Chinese, 00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.000 but only because my English was better...again, looking back 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:28.000 I know that I have really a better life than what they have too. 00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:32.000 So to me, learning English is something I feel 00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:36.000 okay but I also have a strong feeling of the fact that 00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:40.000 you know, the language is always put in a political 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.000 context. It's a sociological context. It actually means, at least in Hong Kong, 00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:48.000 something to do with your future. So students have to learn 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:52.000 very diligently. When I have grown up, there's 00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:56.000 another observation I had that is, you know, being a multilingual 00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:60.000 person, I would say that learning English is not that political. In fact, 00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.000 I think it's also an element of respect of other people. As you said, English 00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:07.000 is really the language of communication these days, not only in 00:26:07.000 --> 00:26:12.000 the workplace but, I think, just as a person, who have extensive 00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:16.000 international experiences. English is the only language that you can 00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:20.000 speak and communicate people as I think the only common platform 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.000 in the world. -Are there any that you missed? 00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:28.000 Sixteen? Yeah. 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:32.000 Sixteen was a difficult one. Who got sixteen? Anybody? 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:36.000 Workplace, close. Yeah, which 00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:40.000 makes sense, right? English is really the language of communication these days, 00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.000 not only in the workplace, but...that's a very Northwest 00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:48.000 American pronunciation: workplace. 00:26:48.000 --> 00:26:52.000 Any others that you missed? Did you get the rest? Yeah? 00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:56.000 I chose words that were...some of them were 00:26:56.000 --> 00:26:60.000 ones that were particularly difficult, where the accent was 00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.000 pretty strong. This is not my 00:27:04.000 --> 00:27:08.000 exercise, this is adapted from, you can see at the bottom, Dan Vurell, 00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:12.000 Ariel Lauren and Kate Evans. They use this activity as part of their 00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:16.000 course in world English at UC Davis a few years ago. I met them at a 00:27:16.000 --> 00:27:20.000 conference and they gave this to me. 00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.000 What does this exercise teach us about 00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:28.000 understanding people with accents? 00:27:32.000 --> 00:27:36.000 Can it teach us anything? 00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:40.000 indistinct talking 00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.000 After you were explaining the influences it had on 00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:48.000 the different type of English that she was learning, it 00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:52.000 kind of made me realize that I can hear other accents in it too. 00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:56.000 It made me realize that I heard a bit of British in that word, or something 00:27:56.000 --> 00:27:60.000 a little bit different, so I was hearing different accents. - And so you can make 00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.000 connections, if you have some connection to, or some familiarity 00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:08.000 with British accents or dialects, you can apply that to this 00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:12.000 accent. Yeah. 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:15.000 The context really helps. 00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:20.000 You don't have to understand every word that's being said, because 00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:23.000 there's a limited number of words that would make sense. 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:28.000 But if I'm just listening to her, it helps if I can read and look at that. 00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:32.000 That does help a lot. Right, right. 00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:40.000 So I'm going to go on to some... 00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.000 The rhythm of the speech is also 00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:48.000 really different than what I'm used to hearing. Is that a thing? -That is a thing. 00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:52.000 We call it stress timed versus... 00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:56.000 now I'm on the spot... 00:28:56.000 --> 00:28:60.000 syllable timed versus...well, I forget the term. Anyway, some 00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.000 languages, like English...English is a stress-timed 00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:08.000 language, and so we have these alternating patterns of stressed and unstressed 00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:12.000 syllables, whereas many other languages have almost the same 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:16.000 stress on every syllable, and so speakers... 00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:20.000 and this is true in Thailand. Thai is not a stress timed language. 00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.000 Thai people to talk with every syllable stressed about the same like this. 00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:28.000 So it just kind of sounds like 'dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. 00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:32.000 Whereas English has a more pronounced stressed rhythm. So that will come 00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:36.000 across in Hong Kong English. Not the same stress patterns. 00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:40.000 There's quite a bit of research on 00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.000 listening to accents, studied by Rubdin and Smith in 1990, and 00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:48.000 this research has been a long time as you can see from these dates. 00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:52.000 In the study, they had college students 00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:56.000 listen to two different speakers. One had a slight 00:29:56.000 --> 00:29:60.000 accent and one had a very pronounced accent. 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.000 They had different groups of students, right? So one group of students listened to 00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:08.000 a slightly-accented speaker, and they were looking 00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:12.000 at a photo of a Chinese woman. Another group of students listened 00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:16.000 to a slightly-accented speaker, and they were looking at a photo of an American woman. 00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:20.000 Another group of students listened to 00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.000 a speaker with a heavy accent, and they saw a photo of 00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:28.000 a Chinese woman, and then the fourth group had 00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:32.000 a speaker with also the heavy accent but they looked at a photo of an American, 00:30:32.000 --> 00:30:36.000 or Caucasian woman. It showed that ratings of 00:30:36.000 --> 00:30:40.000 the teaching ability and ratings of their comprehension 00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.000 were not affected by the degree of accent, but were affected by 00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:48.000 the perceived ethnicity of the speaker. In other words, if they 00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:52.000 saw a photo of a Caucasian woman, they both rated 00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:56.000 the teaching as better and they understood more. 00:30:56.000 --> 00:30:60.000 Regardless of which recording they listened to. If they saw a 00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.000 photo of the Chinese woman, they rated the 00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:08.000 teaching as less good, and they didn't understand as much. 00:31:08.000 --> 00:31:12.000 Same recordings. One of the same researchers 00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:16.000 two years later, did a similar study, but this time he went one step further. 00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:20.000 He had two lectures recorded by 00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.000 native English-speaking Americans. 00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:28.000 Groups of college students listened to recordings by native English 00:31:28.000 --> 00:31:32.000 speakers. Some of the students saw a photo of a Chinese 00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:36.000 woman, and some of the students saw a photo of an American woman, 00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:40.000 dressed almost identically, same context and everything. 00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.000 All of the recordings were by native English speakers with American accents. 00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:48.000 The students who saw photos of the Chinese woman 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:52.000 comprehended less than those who saw 00:31:52.000 --> 00:31:56.000 the Caucasian photo. So there is definitely 00:31:56.000 --> 00:31:60.000 subconscious stereotypes that come to play 00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.000 when we listen to people with accents. 00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:08.000 These are just two examples. In a lot of research they had some of the same results. 00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:12.000 What they said is 'listeners' perceptions of the instructors' 00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:16.000 accent--whether accurate perceptions or not--were the strongest 00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:20.000 predictors of teacher ratings. When students believed an instructor's 00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.000 accent to be 'foreign,' they simultaneously perceived him or her 00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:28.000 to be a poor teacher. Also of particular interest, the best predictor of undergraduates' 00:32:28.000 --> 00:32:32.000 listening comprehension scores was the number of courses 00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:36.000 they had taken that had been instructed by nonnative instructors. Those students 00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:40.000 who had persevered with their nonnative English speaking instructors had 00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.000 been rewarded by improved skill in listening to accented speech. 00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:48.000 Kind of following up on that, there's a lot of research that 00:32:48.000 --> 00:32:52.000 shows that the more familiar you are with an accent 00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:56.000 that's different from your own, the better you get at hearing it. And what I'm 00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:60.000 getting at here is that communication is a two-way street. If you're speaking 00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.000 to somebody with an accent, it's partly the job of the person 00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:08.000 with the accent to speak more like the people 00:33:08.000 --> 00:33:12.000 in the place they're living, but it's also part of the 00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:16.000 listener's ears. You can learn 00:33:16.000 --> 00:33:20.000 to understand accented speech better. 00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.000 Both of these studies demonstrated 00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:28.000 that college students, both English native speakers and L2 users, are better able 00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:32.000 to understand accents that are similar to their own. So some potential causes 00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:36.000 of difficulty in understanding people with accents. 00:33:36.000 --> 00:33:40.000 Some L2 speakers are more difficult to understand than others. I mean, 00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.000 some people, if they're a language learner or if they 00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:48.000 use a variety that is very different from yours, they may be more 00:33:48.000 --> 00:33:52.000 difficult, but native speakers should keep in mind that, as a 00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:56.000 native speaker, you bring more linguistic resources 00:33:56.000 --> 00:33:60.000 to the conversation. It's a two-way street. If somebody 00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.000 has an accent and they're speaking to you, you have more 00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:08.000 resources available than they do. Some native speakers deliberately 00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:12.000 choose not to understand accented speech, and it does actually require 00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:16.000 more cognitive effort to understand accented speech. 00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:20.000 I encounter this in Thailand a lot. I can speak 00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.000 Thai, I can speak conversational Thai pretty good. I would go to the market 00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:28.000 and, typically...I don't want to, you know, 00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:32.000 stereotype, but typically it was an older type person selling things 00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:36.000 in the market. I would try to buy something, and you always have to discuss 00:34:36.000 --> 00:34:40.000 price and how much an what kind and what's available. I would 00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.000 speak Thai and they would look at me like I am speaking 00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:48.000 an alien language. I would say the exact 00:34:48.000 --> 00:34:52.000 same thing to a younger person next to them, and they would 00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:56.000 understand me. Some native speakers deliberately, 00:34:56.000 --> 00:34:60.000 when they see somebody who looks different, or they start to hear 00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.000 an accent, they just assume they're not gonna get it, and attitude plays 00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:08.000 a huge role in this. Some native speakers are subconsciously biased 00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:12.000 to speaker ethnicity as we saw in those earlier studies. 00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:16.000 A general lack of familiarity with different accents creates 00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:20.000 trepidation in listeners that affects comprehension. This is a lack of 00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.000 confidence and many second language users, and 00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:28.000 many people with an accent report that when they speak with 00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:32.000 other native speakers, they can sense that the 00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:36.000 people they are talking to are reluctant to talk with them 00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:40.000 because they just aren't used to their accent. 00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.000 And basically that comes down to a lack of confidence in the hearer. 00:35:44.000 --> 00:35:48.000 A more recent study: 00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:52.000 Derwing, Rossiter and Munro. They took three groups of students who were 00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:56.000 in a community college program for social work. 00:35:56.000 --> 00:35:60.000 One was a control group; they took a pre-test 00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.000 and post-test on the ability to understand people with accents. 00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:08.000 The second group they called the familiarity group. 00:36:08.000 --> 00:36:12.000 Once a week in their class, they listened to accented 00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:16.000 speech and they talked about issues that immigrants have with 00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:20.000 adjusting to new places. And then there was a third group they called 00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.000 the accent group. They practiced listening to accented speech, but 00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:28.000 also they did exactly what we did. 00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:32.000 They studied the actual phonological differences between 00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:36.000 the accents of the people they were studying, and their own accents. 00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:40.000 They started to see the regularities and systematic patterns of difference. 00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.000 What was the result? The first group, 00:36:44.000 --> 00:36:48.000 the control group, they actually did better on the 00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:52.000 post-test. The explanation that the researchers gave, which was 00:36:52.000 --> 00:36:56.000 very reasonable, and it sounds kind of funny, but it's reasonable. 00:36:56.000 --> 00:36:60.000 Due to the fact that they took a pre-test, asking them 00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.000 about how to understand accents, they were more 00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:08.000 aware, and in the course--it was a ten-week course on 00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:12.000 being a social worker--the course did cover a lot of immigration issues, 00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:16.000 they were more sensitive and they were more aware of people with accents, 00:37:16.000 --> 00:37:20.000 and they actually did better on the post-test. Their ability to 00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.000 understand accents improved. But the second 00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:28.000 group, the ones who did some practice listening, they 00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:32.000 both improved on the post-test, and in their 00:37:32.000 --> 00:37:36.000 self-reports of their ability to hear accents and their confidence 00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:40.000 and their willingness to interact with people with accents was 00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.000 vastly improved. The people in group one really didn't improve 00:37:44.000 --> 00:37:48.000 much in their confidence or willingness to interact with 00:37:48.000 --> 00:37:52.000 people with accents, but the people in group two improved a lot. The people 00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:56.000 in group three improved almost twice as much as that. 00:37:56.000 --> 00:37:60.000 Their confidence and their willingness 00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.000 to interact with people with accents was far higher than 00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:08.000 any of the other groups because of some once-a-week training 00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:12.000 and there's an interesting note at the end of the article. 00:38:12.000 --> 00:38:16.000 The author said 'sixteen months after the data collection was 00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:20.000 completed, the social work instructor of the Accent group received a telephone 00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.000 call from a student who had participated int he study. She reported 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:28.000 having been the only member of an intervention team able to communicate 00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:32.000 with a Vietnamese woman in an elder abuse case. The former student 00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:36.000 attributed her success to the listening training she had received the year before. 00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:40.000 Studying different accents, and practicing listening 00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.000 to them, may not actually increase your 00:38:44.000 --> 00:38:48.000 ability to hear accents that much better, but what it 00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:52.000 really does is it improves your self-confidence 00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:56.000 and your perceived ability, and, remember, 00:38:56.000 --> 00:38:60.000 in these earlier studies, it's all about perception. 00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.000 How do we perceive people who are different? 00:39:04.000 --> 00:39:08.000 The less different we perceive them, the better we can understand them. 00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:12.000 So this is kind of a micro-linguistic 00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:16.000 way of talking about diversity and the importance 00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:20.000 of diversity and how we learn from each other 00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.000 and from people who are different. So going back to the 00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:28.000 bigger idea, universities--and it's not just 00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:32.000 Western; I think all universities--provide institutional 00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:36.000 spaces, places, where people 00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:40.000 of very different backgrounds interact with common goals. 00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.000 And so, we have these broad missions. You know, we have 00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:48.000 the mission and our values of community diversity and respect; we have learning 00:39:48.000 --> 00:39:52.000 outcomes for cultural knowledge and competency, and those broad ideas 00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:56.000 are essential, because those affect everything below them. 00:39:56.000 --> 00:39:60.000 If you look at the faculty at Western, 00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.000 I helped the committee I'm on conduct a survey 00:40:04.000 --> 00:40:08.000 last fall where we asked faculty about languages they speak, 00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:12.000 and places they've studied, and things like that. 00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:16.000 Sixty percent of the people who responded--we had a good 00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:20.000 number of people respond to the survey; that's faculty and staff, and 00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.000 administration--sixty percent of everybody 00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:28.000 indicated 00:40:28.000 --> 00:40:32.000 some level of proficiency in a second language. 00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:36.000 Thirty one percent of faculty reported being skilled in two or more additional 00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:40.000 languages. Of faculty and staff 00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.000 thirty one percent of faculty and twenty five percent 00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:48.000 of staff have studied abroad for usually 00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:52.000 five to nine months. So a lot of the people who 00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:56.000 work here have studied abroad, and we bring that to our 00:40:56.000 --> 00:40:60.000 classes. Sixty percent of faculty 00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.000 reported extensive work, research, service, or residence abroad, 00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:08.000 with nearly half of those lasting more than a year. 00:41:08.000 --> 00:41:12.000 Remember, I said I came from Amity; I did my undergraduate work here 00:41:12.000 --> 00:41:16.000 at Western. This was where I really encountered 00:41:16.000 --> 00:41:20.000 people from very different places, mostly professors and some other 00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.000 students. So the fact that our faculty--and partly it's the 00:41:24.000 --> 00:41:28.000 nature of professors; our jobs are scarce; 00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:32.000 when we look for a job we kind of have to go where there's an opening-- 00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:36.000 most people who work in a PhD don't do it 00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:40.000 in the state where they grew up. So working on a PhD 00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.000 and doing doctorate research 00:41:44.000 --> 00:41:48.000 often entails a lot of movement and international work 00:41:48.000 --> 00:41:52.000 and collaborations. So a lot of faculty bring those 00:41:52.000 --> 00:41:56.000 experiences to classes. Even thirty seven 00:41:56.000 --> 00:41:60.000 percent of the staff at Western reported 00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.000 significant time abroad in 23 different countries. 00:42:04.000 --> 00:42:08.000 Thirty one percent of faculty collaborate 00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:12.000 regularly with international colleagues. Forty three percent of the faculty 00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:16.000 have presented their work at international conferences. 00:42:16.000 --> 00:42:20.000 Faculty and staff are just one element of 00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.000 global diversity at Western. 00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:28.000 International students; at this time we have about 00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:32.000 two hundred and fifty international students at Western. 00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:36.000 We have had as many as three hundred and fifty or so in the past. 00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:40.000 Even our domestic students, there's a range of 00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.000 diversity. I just read in the president's 00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:48.000 newsletter that 00:42:48.000 --> 00:42:52.000 in the February 2017 Chronicle of Higher Education, 00:42:52.000 --> 00:42:56.000 WOU is the top mainland university for 00:42:56.000 --> 00:42:60.000 native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander students. 00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.000 We have a very big population of Hawaiian 00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:08.000 and Pacific Islander students, and if you go to the annual luau, you can enjoy 00:43:08.000 --> 00:43:12.000 their events. We also have coursework 00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:16.000 that is labeled as diverse. 00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:20.000 This is a list of departments that have diversity courses. So if you look in 00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.000 the course catalogue, you'll see Anthropology 00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:36.000 on campus has courses that are designated as diversity courses. 00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:40.000 All foreign language courses-- 00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.000 to keep with the linguistics theme--are diversity courses. You learn about 00:43:44.000 --> 00:43:48.000 people who are different. The history faculty 00:43:48.000 --> 00:43:52.000 went nuts. They really showed that they have a diverse 00:43:52.000 --> 00:43:56.000 curriculum. But there are courses that are not up here. 00:43:56.000 --> 00:43:60.000 I teach linguistics and, definitely in my linguistics 00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.000 classes, we learn a lot about diversity and understanding 00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:08.000 people with different languages, and we're not even labeled as 00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:12.000 diversity courses. So many courses entail studying globalized 00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:16.000 perspectives. We also have 00:44:16.000 --> 00:44:20.000 travel opportunities. We have about fifty students a year who 00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.000 travel abroad, who study abroad for anything from a summer program 00:44:24.000 --> 00:44:27.000 to a semester or full academic year abroad. There are also 00:44:27.000 --> 00:44:32.000 shorter-term service learning trips that are available. 00:44:32.000 --> 00:44:36.000 If any of you students are interested, there are a lot of study abroad opportunities. 00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:40.000 Clubs and organizations; there's 00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.000 an international club. I should put in a little plug. This Friday 00:44:44.000 --> 00:44:48.000 evening is International Night. 00:44:48.000 --> 00:44:52.000 The doors open at 5:30, program starts at 6:30. 00:44:52.000 --> 00:44:56.000 There are presentations from different student groups representing different 00:44:56.000 --> 00:44:60.000 countries. I've been here at Western since 2007. 00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.000 My wife can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I've 00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:08.000 been at every International Night program, and for the first time ever, 00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:12.000 I'm going to be doing something at this year's International Night. 00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:16.000 I'm going to be singing the Thai royal anthem. 00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:20.000 A few months ago, the king of Thaliand 00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.000 passed away; at that time the world's oldest living 00:45:24.000 --> 00:45:28.000 monarch and longest-reigning monarch. He's actually a wonderful ruler. 00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:32.000 So as a little tribute to the Thai king I'll be singing the Thai royal anthem. 00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:36.000 We have a multicultural student union which has many services that 00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:40.000 are not so much international but reflect the diversity in the United States. 00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.000 We have a lot of cultural events; there's the annual Luau, there's International 00:45:44.000 --> 00:45:48.000 Night...let me see... 00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:52.000 there's the Powwow, 00:45:56.000 --> 00:45:60.000 the Latino...yeah, Nostro Fiesta Latina. 00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.000 Many cultural events going on on campus. 00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:08.000 Even in terms of recreational sports. When I go to 00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:12.000 the Health and Wellness Center in the evening, and I walk by the 00:46:12.000 --> 00:46:16.000 basketball court, I always see international students and domestic 00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:20.000 students there playing together. We have at least 00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.000 one international hall in the dorms, and I'll mention the 00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:28.000 conversation partners program. Raise your hand if you're a conversation 00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:32.000 partner this term. One. 00:46:32.000 --> 00:46:36.000 I know Erin was so I asked. This is a program 00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:40.000 that I've run for four years. We match up 00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.000 volunteers who are international students and domestic students, and we 00:46:44.000 --> 00:46:48.000 partner them together for weekly informal 00:46:48.000 --> 00:46:52.000 conversation. Here's some photos. So on the third week of the term we 00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:56.000 have a big party where most of the partners meet each other, and we do 00:46:56.000 --> 00:46:60.000 some small group discussion and stuff like that. 00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.000 So anybody want to guess? We do it every term, so it's 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:08.000 new people every term. How many students do you think have been in the 00:47:08.000 --> 00:47:12.000 conversation partner program this year at Western. Any guesses? 00:47:12.000 --> 00:47:16.000 A hundred? 00:47:16.000 --> 00:47:20.000 We broke a record. Two hundred and thirty. 00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.000 Two hundred and thirty, and that's 00:47:24.000 --> 00:47:28.000 typically...yeah? 00:47:28.000 --> 00:47:32.000 How do you sign up? Oh, I didn't bring my flyers. 00:47:32.000 --> 00:47:36.000 I always send out an email in the first week of the term. 00:47:36.000 --> 00:47:40.000 It goes term by term, so in the first week 00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.000 I send out an email. You can reply to CP@wou.edu. 00:47:44.000 --> 00:47:48.000 You say that you're interested, and then in week 2, 00:47:48.000 --> 00:47:52.000 I have an assistant and we sit down and we match up all the partners. We look at 00:47:52.000 --> 00:47:56.000 people's schedules and their majors and things like that, and then in week three 00:47:56.000 --> 00:47:60.000 we all meet. And then after that you meet on your own. 00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.000 For most people it's a great program. International students 00:48:04.000 --> 00:48:08.000 have a chance to learn about campus, to make an American 00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:12.000 friend, and the American students have a chance to learn about 00:48:12.000 --> 00:48:16.000 someone from another country. What it comes down to is, it's that 00:48:16.000 --> 00:48:20.000 close interaction, and that's really my 00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.000 theme for today is that if you want to understand 00:48:24.000 --> 00:48:28.000 diversity, you need close interaction. Just like if you want to understand 00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:32.000 accents, you need to practice. You need familiarity, 00:48:32.000 --> 00:48:36.000 and you need to pay close attention, and you need to 00:48:36.000 --> 00:48:40.000 be willing to interact with people who are different. 00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.000 As a conclusion, toward the end of Dan Everett's article that 00:48:44.000 --> 00:48:48.000 I gave you, he says in his last paragraph: 'diversity 00:48:48.000 --> 00:48:52.000 is the heart of success because it is the heart of learning. 00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:56.000 Without ensuring a flow of wisdom from strangers, a country 00:48:56.000 --> 00:48:60.000 chooses the comfort of sameness and predictability over the challenge of new 00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.000 ways of thinking and living. One thing that is similar across human populations 00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:08.000 is the set of problems we all have to solve--food, clothing, shelter, 00:49:08.000 --> 00:49:12.000 happiness. The power of diversity offers us inexhaustible 00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:16.000 sets of solutions to these problems. The wisdom of strangers can be learned 00:49:16.000 --> 00:49:20.000 only when we submit ourselves to differences, seek them out, 00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.000 and celebrate the perimeters of human experience. 00:49:24.000 --> 00:49:28.000 If you're in one of my classes, thanks for coming, and if you're not 00:49:28.000 --> 00:49:32.000 thanks for coming. I hope you learned a little something about 00:49:32.000 --> 00:49:37.000 linguistics and also about diversity and globalization. Thanks. 00:49:37.000 --> 00:49:40.000 Thank you shokran, kabukun, xiexie. 00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.000 applause