Page 185 - Beyond Methods

Fostering language awareness 173
7.2.1 Recently, we have been witnessing a global phenomenon: offi- cial apologies emanating from political as well as religious leaders of the world for real or perceived human rights abuses of the past. Ex- amine the archives of the on-line edition of a national newspaper (or a news magazine) of your choice. Go to any search engine on the Inter- net (such as Yahoo, Google) to find the web address of the newspaper or the news magazine you are interested in. Look for information on recent political apologies.
7.2.2 Your research may have revealed several instances of political apologies of a sensitive nature: (a) the Pope apologizing to Jews for the Vatican’s indifference during the Holocaust, (b) Switzerland apologiz- ing to Jews for the loss of their money deposited in Swiss banks during the Holocaust, (c) the United States apologizing to Japanese-Americans for their internment during the Second World War, (d) Japan apolo- gizing to some of its Asian neighbors for treating enemy women as “comfort women,” and (e) Australia trying to reconcile its past with an apology to the aboriginals in that country, and so on.
7.2.3 Select any one of the above five cases or any other similar case that you came up with in your archival research. Then, write an outline of a classroom activity—a step-by-step teaching strategy to make your learners aware of the complex factors (e.g., historical, political, national, cultural, linguistic) involved in political apologies, keeping in mind the proficiency level of your students.
7.2.4 Think about the best way of carrying out the classroom activ- ity—through group work? Pair work? Role play? How to steer class discussion to achieve the major objective of creating critical language awareness?
7.2.5 Plan how to start the activity in class—for instance, how you would extend the earlier discussion on personal apologies to the con- cept of national or international apology.
7.2.6 If it is difficult to do archival research on the Internet, focus on current newspapers or news magazines and select stories of political apologies that are linguistically and conceptually appropriate to your class. I present below one such story; you may find several others.
In early April 2001, a Chinese interceptor plane and a U.S. intelli- gence plane collided off China’s southern coast, killing the Chinese pilot, Wang Wei. The American spy plane with its twenty-four-member crew made a safe emergency landing on Hainan Island without formal approval from the Chinese control tower. The Chinese government demanded a formal apology from the American government. After a