Welcome to my blog!

Hello, my name is Sidney! I am so exciting to be blogging with all of you! I am a fourth year Arts student majoring in Asian studies and minoring in the Education of language learning and teaching. I am graduating this May and after I graduate I hope to teach English as an additional language in Vancouver.

Why did I choose this course? & My expectations for this course.

The reason why I chose this course is because I believe that this course is able to support me as a aspiring English teacher. As an English teacher who wants to teach English in Vancouver I believe it is my job to not only teach my students English but also to teach my students about Canadian culture, traditions, and history. I feel that the best way to teach the English language and Canadian culture is by getting my students to read different types Canadian literature. I hope that ENGL 372 will introduce me to different types of Canadian literature and teach me how to properly understand and analyze it as this would allow me to be able to make informed decisions when picking Canadian literature to teach to my future students. I also hope that this course introduces Indigenous narratives as I would like to become more familiar with this topic and become acquainted with materials that I can use to teach this topic. When immigrants and international students first come to Canada they may not know that Canada was colonized and that the land of the indigenous people was stolen by settlers and I think it is partially my job to teach them about this part of Canada’s history and good way to teach this is through Canadian literature.

The Danger of Teaching English 

Another reason why I wanted to take this course is because this course involves reading the narratives of Indigenous people and through these narratives I want to become more aware of the dangers of teaching English. I first learned about the dangers of teaching English in LLED 489A. LLED 489A is not a class that you would expect to learn this kind of lesson as LLED 489A is an English grammar class. However, during one of the classes our professor decided to take the class to the UBC long house to watch a film based on an indigenous story. At first I was confused why the professor wanted to ‘waste’ a day of class to go watch this film, I thought to myself “what does this film have to do with me becoming an English teacher?”. But after watching the film I learned a really important lesson about teaching English. This lesson was that teaching English can be dangerous as English is a predator language and can kill other languages. The film that I watched Edge of Knife (Siff) taught me this as I learned that the film was made “for the purpose of revitalizing the Indigenous Haida Gwaii language, as their language had become endangered due to the fact that most people in the Indigenous community grew up only learning English” (Scharf, 2019). In Canadian society English is more accepted and economically valued and this is what causes the death of Indigenous languages (Scharf, 2019). But the film Edge of the Knife is fighting to keep the Haida Gwaii language alive as the film is “performed entirely in the Haida language” (TIFF Trailers) and most of the young actors who were of Haida Gwaii background were taught the Haida language for the film. Before the film there were “less than 20 fluent speakers” (TIFF Trailers) and now after the film there is much more. I recommend everyone to watch the film Edge of Knife as I can promise you that you have never watched a film like this before. The movie is based on an indigenous oral story and it paints a beautiful yet haunting and dark story about a man who turns into a beast “and spirals into insanity after accidentally killing his best friend’s son” (Siff).This movie is not only filmed beautifully but also the making of the film itself represents something special as it represents the push back against the predator language English and the revival of the Haida Gwaii language (CBC Docs).

Brief description of ENGL 372

My understanding is that in this course we are going to be reading and analyzing different types of European and Indigenous literature. By reading this literature we can further learn about social dynamics and the lives of different people throughout Canadian history. And by closely analyzing the literature we can learn how to think critically about the events that have happened in the past and how these events may now even have a huge impact on our present and future.

Works cited

CBC Docs. Youtube, “Making the world’s first Haida-language feature film”. 4 Sep. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WwICs7S-AQ

Haig-Brown, Helen and Gwaai Edenshaw, directors. Edge of the Knife. Haida Gwaii, Niijang Xyaalas Productions, 1 Sept. 2018.

Scharf, Sidney. “Metaphor of Language: Language as a predator” 2019.

“Sgaawaay K’uuna (Edge of the Knife).” SIFF, https://www.siff.net/festival/sgaawaay-kuuna-(edge-of-the-knife).

TIFF Trailers. “SGAAWAAY K’UUNA (EDGE OF THE KNIFE) TRAILER”. YouTube, 5 Dec. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnbOw5Nuq2U.