Is ‘msonge’ a house? Visualizing a novel in the L2 classroom: The case of Swahili

Is ‘msonge’ a house?

Visualizing a novel in the L2 classroom:

The case of Swahili

Charles Bwenge University of Florida

Abstract

The concept of ‘reading without seeing’ is used in this paper to refer to a situation where an individual lacks cultural knowledge for the construction of appropriate mental images of the L2 cultural products that are encountered in a prose text. This is a common problem among L2 learners, which inevitably emanates from a cul-tural gap existing between L1 and L2 cultures. Using a Swahili short novel, Ndoto ya Amerika, as a case study, this paper demonstrates the usefulness of a novel as one of the best authentic materials for en-hancing both L2 language and cultural proficiency. Furthermore, for the purposes of optimization of such resourceful materials, it is pro-posed that this cultural gap can be narrowed and one of the effective ways for reaching this goal is to visualize as many L2 cultural prod-ucts encountered in the novel as possible. A systematic visualization is necessary for a near-perfect copy of the real cultural product.

Introduction

Nancy Parrott Hickerson (1980, p.106) observes:

we often experience in translating from one language to another.

The above observation is very pertinent for the purpose of this pa-per, which is to demonstrate the existence of cultural gap between native language (L1) and foreign language (L2) cultures as experi-enced by the L2 learners as they engage in reading L2 prose texts, and to propose some of the effective ways to narrow this gap, that is, to systematically and optimally visualize cultural products which are re-flected in a given prose. The significance of authentic materials (i.e., oral and written texts that occur naturally in the target language envi-ronment) in L2 pedagogy such as TV, radio, video, newspapers, mag-azines, literature, stories, maps, mails, brochures, cards, texts for aca-demic and business settings has for long time been recognized by both L2 researchers and practitioners (Erickson, 1996; Larimer & Schleicher, 1999; Sherman, 2003; Faltis & Coulter, 2008). Larimer & Schleicher (1999, p. vi) aptly put it this way: “we would argue that authentic materials have a place in every classroom, from day 1.” The worldwide domination of English and the economic and technologi-cal power of the English-speaking countries like the United States, for instance, make it easy for availability and accessibility of English language materials such as authentic videos, as Sherman (2003) ob-serves:

There are now few countries without access to English-language television programs and feature films. You can watch the TV news on the Internet, pick up sports programs on satellite TV, and rent or buy video cassettes and DVDs directly or by post. In many countries, English-language feature films with English subtitles are sold in newsagents. The supply is enormous and the materials are very high quality, rela-tively cheap and constantly renewed. Audio-visual in-put is now as accessible as print. It’s a resource we can’t ignore, and our students certainly won’t.

tiny minority who have been abroad, do not have sufficient oppor-tunity for interacting with the L2 environments on a daily basis as their L2 (English or French learners in Africa) counterparts through such media as clearly demonstrated in the above quoted observation. Consequently African language students outside the continent en-counter enormous difficulty in mapping L2 lexical forms to new con-cepts appropriately, especially those lexical forms representing cul-ture-specific items. This is most likely to happen when texts such as novels are used in the L2 instruction. It should be noted here that a novel is a cultural product in a form of text revealing various and complex cultural settings, and when employed properly in the L2 in-struction, it can effectively facilitate all communicative skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking, while enabling the learners to acquire cultural knowledge. Visualizing cultural settings may facilitate this process as there are many differences between languages in the way the categories regarding the natural and cultural landscape are defined or conceptualized (Hickerson, 1980; Boggaard et al. 2003; Jiang, 2002). Considering a Swahili novel as a case study, this paper ex-plores and discusses systematic ways of bridging such a cultural gap in the process of L2 learning.

Communication, Culture, Connections, Comparisons, and Communi-ties (ACTFL, 1999; Blaz, 2002).

One of the major assumptions underlying this study is that a story presented in a novel will make a lot of sense and result in per-sonal fulfillment to the reader who has experienced the culture from which it is produced because he or she sees the cultural setting as he/she reads it. In other words, for a story in a novel to be meaning-ful, readers must ‘see’ what they are ‘reading’. That is, they should be able to construct cultural images (mental pictures) appropriately as presented the narratives. But this level of understanding cannot be reached if the reader has never experienced the culture which is being depicted in a story, and consequently the novel will become less meaningful to the reader. This is what I call ‘reading without seeing’. It is a cultural gap between L1 and L2 cultures, particularly regarding African L2s, that is mostly experienced when a novel is used in the L2 learning and teaching process. This gap has not received the atten-tion it deserves and as a result continues to present a problem in us-ing a novel in an African language classroom. Indeed, short novels may be introduced to the intermediate high or advanced low L2 learners as they are expected to be “able to read somewhat longer prose of several paragraphs in length, particularly if presented with a clear underlying structure” (ACTFL, 1999, www.sil.lingualinks/ LANGUAGELEARNING/).

Teaching L2 with an L2 novel: a rationale

It is indisputable that literary works such as novels, plays, and poems are among the most effective authentic materials for enhanc-ing L2 learnenhanc-ing (Faltis & Coulter, 2008; Sherman, 2003; Larimer & Schleicher, 1999) . They are among the most effective authentic ma-terials because they draw their content and form, in which language is part, from the very culture that produces them.Literary works do not only bring language in its original form in the L2 classroom, but also a very rich cultural knowledge of the L2 speech communities.Of par-ticular interest among literary works is the novel, especially short novels that could be introduced at intermediate level and above. The most fascinating thing about using a novel in the learning and teach-ing of L2 is that it coherently brteach-ings together all five strands (the five Cs). In practice, the five Cs are meant to be interwoven among them-selves and, undeniably, they manifest well in this form in the novel. Nevertheless, more often than not we inevitably separate them for analytical purposes. For example, in a story presented in a novel we have characters engaged in communicative interactions in relation to cultural products (perspectives, practices, and products) within spe-cific cultural settings. All these present a totality of a culture. We sep-arate related components for analytical purposes. In this regard, this study focuses on the cultural strand and how it manifests itself in a novel.

Assumptions

L1 vs. L2 Culture: theoretical roots

One of the crucial questions we may ask ourselves is why cul-ture? Culture has been singled out by the majority of L2 scholars as the second most important component of foreign language educa-tion. Blaz (2002, p.53), for example, argues that “students cannot tru-ly master a language until they have mastered the cultural contexts in which the language occurs, and so knowledge of the culture of the target language is essential.”

Of course, as scholars such as Williams (1983) and Barker and Galasinski (2001) have pointed out, the concept of culture is one of the most complicated words in the English language. Hall (1997, p.2) probably offers one of the most useful ways of understanding culture asserting that it “depends on its participants interpreting meaningfully what is happening around them, and ‘making sense’ of the world, in broadly similar ways”. And Barker and Galasinski (2001:4) aptly state that “to understand culture is to explore how meaning is produced symbolically through the signifying practices of language within material and institutional contexts.” It is now a common knowledge that a language enables its speakers to relate to their environment, but no language is in any sense an exact and per-fect copy of the real world. Evidence is also widespread from cross-cultural comparisons pointing to basic differences in the ways that people perceive their real world, their universe. One of the widely cited examples in the literature concerns kinship terms and how they reveal people’s perceptions of their social relations (Bonvillain, 1997). Hickerson (1980:106) observes that:

Yet in the day-to-day L2 learning and teaching activities we inevitably engage in translation practices, sometimes successfully and at other times less successful. Even learners dictionaries are specifi-cally designed to help the learners to negotiate through this fascinat-ing array of L1-L2 lexical ‘equivalents’. As Hickerson points out dif-ferent cultures verbally map the reality difdif-ferently and consequently it is rare to have exact equivalents between two or more languages. While participating in verbal interactions, speakers of a given cultural group come to engagement with various shared knowledge of their culture as expressed and transmitted through their language. This is what some scholars refer to as cultural presupposition (e.g., Bonvil-lain, 1997). This phenomenon has enormous implications for the L2 learning. While engaged with the L2 texts the L2 learners are most likely to run into difficulty of interpreting the L2 concepts incorrectly because they visualize such products with their L1 cultural presuppo-sition. Even where L1-L2 translation dictionaries are available it is difficulty for lexicographers to include all cultural differences and de-tails. While a prose text may become a source for the L2 cultural deep knowledge in this regard, visualizing L2 cultural products in the L2 classroom can help to disambiguate cultural confusion and enhance both lexical and cultural proficiency. Let us consider an L2 novel and possible lexical ambiguities.

Seeing while reading: assumptions

L2 learners especially at novice and intermediate levels fall in the category of knowing less or none of L2 cultural and are most like-ly to find themselves unable to construct ‘appropriate’ mental images of the cultural settings in which a novel that they are using in class is situated. This is so, because they have not experienced the L2 culture in any form such as living in it or seeing (actual) it through the media (TV, the Internet, movies, magazines, etc.)

L2 cultural experience vs cultural gap: an asymmetrical flow

Let’s consider English and Swahili for illustrative purposes. Although English is the official language in the Swahili speaking re-gion of East Africa, it is learned as a foreign language (L2) by the ma-jority of its East African speakers. Similarly, Swahili is learnt and taught as L2 in American colleges and universities. A secondary school student in East Africa is most likely to enjoy and make a lot of sense of a cultural setting described in a novel written in English re-flecting, say, a scene in New York city or Miami city. This is because American cultural products are not completely strange to young peo-ple in East Africa. Due to its technological advancement and eco-nomic power, USA’s cultural products are known to most parts of the globe through world class media such as CNN, the Internet, Hol-lywood movies, and various magazines. CNN International (CNNI), an English language television network that carries news, current af-fairs and business and entertainment programming world-wide, is available in most of the world, including some of the remotest villag-es in Africa distributed via satellite and cable. Its international reach is said to be more than 200 million households (mainly in urban areas but also a few in rural) areas in over 200 countries. This situation contributes to African people on the continent to experience the cul-ture of the West without physically leaving their continent.

In this regard a young person reading a novel about a city in the US will have no much difficulty to construct appropriate L2 cul-tural images in the process.

daily basis. African nations have no sufficient technology and eco-nomic power to bring their cultural products to the America’s living rooms. Such a situation results into what we may call ‘cultural gap’. A ‘cultural gap’ deprives them an opportunity to ‘appropriately’ visual-ize the setting, and consequently, make little sense or none from such a remarkable authentic source.

‘Cultural gap’ is very critical among American students study-ing African languages for many reasons includstudy-ing priorities of the mass media. The leading world media corporations such as CNNI bring very little to American people from Africa, while they swarm African audience with a lot of American culture (one way cultural traffic!).

Consequently, while an African student in Africa can be able to ‘see’ the cultural setting while reading an American novel, the great majority of American students do not have such a luxury when it comes to reading an African novel. For the majority of American students, African cultural products are encountered for first time when they come to the African language classrooms. This creates a huge cultural gap that calls for well designed pedagogical strategies to gradually narrow it. In this regard, attempts to narrow this cultural gap need to be made if we really want our students to maximize the benefits that come with an African novel, notably the explicit cultural products and practices.

The case of Swahili

For illustrative purposes of this phenomenon, let us consider a sample of micro-settings from a Swahili short novel, Ndoto ya Amerika (lit. ‘American Dream’) which is frequently used in some Swahili programs in the fourth or fifth semester at various universi-ties in the US.

as the targeted audience. Written in simple Swahili with simple grammatical structures and a simple plot, the novella fits well in the cultural strand of the Standards (1999, pp. 47-52) which emphasis on the need to gain knowledge and understanding of other cultures. Un-der this goal area two specific standards are explicated as “2.1 stu-dents demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practice and perspectives of the cultures studied” and “2.2 students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the prod-ucts and perspectives of the cultures studied.”

Is ‘msonge’ a house?

Dwelling is one of the basic human needs and therefore it is found in all societies, but in various forms. People construct houses as dwelling spaces for human habitation. In one or another such dwellings feature enclosing walls, a roof, and one or more floors. A dwelling is among the basic needs of humans because it provides shelter against precipitation, wind, heat, cold, and intruders. Like oth-er social aspects, styles and designs as well as matoth-erials used for con-structing dwellings differ from one society to another, and this can be one of remarkable markers of cultural identity. A dwelling constitutes a central part of a setting in most fictions intended to depict aspect related to human social life. Ndoto ya Amerika tells a story of two boys each living with his mother in a remote village in Kenya. Both are going to a village school but are harboring a ‘dream’ to run away from school and home and go and live in the USA. After all “kila mtu nchini kwetu anaota ndoto hiyo” (every one in our country is having the same dream) as one of the boys states. They finally agree on a trip plan in which they will first have to travel to the city, Nairo-bi, where a friend will assist them in finalizing travel arrangements. They arrive in the city but soon are arrested and prosecuted for en-gaging in criminal activities. One of them is sentenced to a three year juvenile imprisonment and the other one is set free to go back to his village.

interesting cultural products in the village setting is the dwelling. In the opening of the story, the main character who also functions as a narrator of the story, Isaya, introduces himself as follows:

…Kwetu ni kijiji cha Sangura…Nyumba yetu ina kuta za udongo. Kuta hizo zimetengenezwa mviringo. ..imeezekwa kwa nyasi juu …aina hiyo huitwa nyumba ya msonge.…Shamba letu ni dogo sana.

Lit translation:

Our home village is Sangura. Our house is made of mud walls which are in circular shape. It is a grass thatched house. This type of a house is called msonge. Our farm is very small.

The classroom episode

In the fall of 2006 I taught an intermediate Swahili class at one of the US universities. The class had an enrollment of 19 stu-dents. One of the main activities I planned in my syllabus was to read Ndoto ya Amerika. We read the story chapter by chapter; the reading generated speaking as well as writing and at times listening activities. We encountered all types of cultural products which I had no prob-lem of ‘seeing’ as we went through, but I had a feeling that my stu-dents were not ‘seeing’ them as I did. They struggled with new lexical items and grammatical constructions. Part and parcel of learning. I would attempt to clarify some and they would also use their Swahili-English dictionary, Swahili-Swahili-English, Swahili-English-Swahili Dictionary by Nicholas Awde.

From the above excerpt they check in their dictionary the meaning of some lexical items and got the following: from the dic-tionary:

L2 – L1

kijiji – 1. village 2. hamlet

nyumba – 1. house 2.home 3. dwelling 4. lodge msonge – 1. crowd 2. dwelling. 3. adj. confused shamba – 1. farm 2. field 3. plot of land 4.

Where is the problem?

I did not know that there was any problem regarding the concept of ‘msonge’ until later in the middle of the semester. After all, in addition to my own description, the author through his main char-acter provides a clear elaboration of this type of dwelling that:

“Nyumba yetu ina kuta za udongo.” (our house has mud wall). This tells the reader about building materials of the dwelling. “Kuta hizo zimetengenezwa mviringo.” (those walls are circular). This tells the reader about the design or shape of the dwelling.

“Nyumba yetu imeezekwa nyasi juu.” (it is grass thatched)

This tells the reader about the roofing materials of the house. Despite this elaborate description of the house, students still had trouble to make significant sense out of it. How did I know?

Wow! Now we know!

own. Some students made comments that it would have been more useful to screen the film before we started reading the novella!! Wow!

The film, Sharing is Unity, narrowed the gap between L2 cul-ture and L1 culcul-ture that verbal descriptions only could not achieve.

I always take my students’ wows seriously. Students’ ‘wow’ is an indicator that learning has taken place, but also an indicator of a certain turning point in the learning and teaching process. In this case, it is the evidence that the students exactly know what this cul-tural product means among the Swahili speaking people of East Afri-ca. It also suggests the usefulness of supplementing novels with visual aids.

To me this episode was an eye opener. I immediately realized how visualizing settings of a novel can be helpful in the process of narrowing a cultural gap among L2 learners.

A cultural gap then existing among my Swahili students re-garding ‘kijiji’, ‘msonge’, and ‘shamba’ was narrowed by watching a sce-ne in a film that depicted such cultural products in the Swahili speak-ing communities of East Africa.For example, they knew that ‘msonge’ is a house in the sense that it serves same basic functions of any dwelling, but a specific type of a house in this culture in terms of ma-terials and design. It is therefore possible that cultural gaps can be narrowed or eliminated completely by visualizing the settings of a story in an L2 novel. Such an approach enhances L2 lexical profi-ciency as embedded in the cultural knowledge, connections, compari-sons, and personal enjoyment and enrichment.

Designing a systematic program for videolizing a novel

would be most desirable and fruitful. An LCTL program can follow the following steps: 1) identify and earmark L2 short novels that can be potentially used in learning and teaching the L2; 2) study each novel carefully underscoring most important cultural products; 3) identify and select the macro-setting and important micro-settings of the L2 culture that resemble the ones featuring in the earmarked novels. Authentic physical/cultural locations need not be exact the same as those portrayed in the novel. Importantly, they should be similar, as in the case of a village in ‘Sharing is Unity’ and Isaya’s vil-lage in Ndoto ya Amerika. 4) set a plan (project proposal) to videotape earmarked real scenes,; and 5) implement the plan.

It should also be noted that in this process the central focus is on the physical setting and not on verbal materials. However, the ad-vantage of videotaping is that verbal materials is an added value and can be used to achieve various L2 learning goals.

Back to the actual learning and teaching situation; incorporate video pictures in the L2 syllabus. Learning and teaching the L2 with a novel supplemented by well designed video pictures could be referred to as viderature.

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