Week 8: Cultural Representation

In this week’s assigned reading, I was surprised to see how great of an impact that images can make for a non native speaker learning English. The images in the EFL textbooks can be a very important aspect for these students when learning. I thought about myself being a visual learner and a native speaker. These students may not completely understand the text but can draw conclusions from images. Right in the introduction of Taylor-Mendes’ article I was stunned to see what the student Fatima had to say.

She is quoted saying, “I see more White people than Black people. I saw ... when I saw Black people, I saw them in a poor situation. Here they don't put a rich man for example who have a job and have a happy family. To me this is ridiculous ... it's like they show the majority who have money is the White people, and who have this lifestyle is the majority of people who have money ... and they are White. I think the [English language] books ... This people who study in ... schools very expensive want to see themselves, and to see themselves is to see White people ... White people and happy situations, a car, a beautiful beach, beautiful things.

Fatima’s reaction to images in her EFL textbook made me question how I would depict English language speakers in a textbook. Her reaction also upset me to see how much of an impact stereotypes have in our world. As future educators of the English language we need to break the mold and stay far away from stereotypes. It is crazy to see how the creators of these kinds of textbooks believe that the images are apolitical, neutral and enjoyable. These images are putting ideas in to the learners of English that may not be true! Also, from reading the other comments made by students learning the language is that each and every one of them have their own interpretation with the same general stereotypical observations. It is incredible how much they can interpret just from viewing a picture. They do say that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Another idea that stood out to me was when the author discusses the question, what does an English speaker look like? Once again, I began to question myself as to how I would answer such a question. The first thought that came to my mind was a white person, seeing that I am one. But is that the right answer? I don’t necessarily believe so and therefore I started to understand how the responses to this question would be biased, prejudiced or even racist. However, the simple answer that can be depicted from the images in EFL textbooks is “White, wealthy, powerful, isolated with members of their own race, and free of problems.”  I think that we have come such a long way from the past of harsh racial biases to even jeopardize our chances at reinforcing our past ideas.  It makes me uncomfortable for people of other races to see these kinds of stereotypes reoccurring in our society today.