The Death of Expertise is in One Way Actually Helping English Learners
Self actualization is both a curse and a blessing. My friend calls it a “social masturbation” referring to the idea that it is becoming normal to post new thing as a way to satisfy ourselves. One from many result of this phenomenon is called “ the death of expertise”. While i am no expert in social media psychology but thanks to google and information you can get by using the tool, i manage to get the gist of what the terms covers.
A simple type of “ the death of expertise means” on any of your search engine (in case there is still psycho out there using bing) will bring you list of website where there people who try to explain to you what this term actually means. It is very ironic however that trying to talk about the “the death of expertise” while at the same time do exactly the thing that contribute to the rise of the exact phenomenon.
The Case of Overlearning
Have you ever unintentionally memorize a song lyric just because everywhere you go people play that song? Yes i want you to the bone, i want you to the bone~. Just like that overlearning happens when information are being delivered to us repetitively. One of the good thing about this social masturbation era is that we don’t really need to find information, they will find us.
English language then can easily be found maybe in the form of serious article to just your favorite singer’s tweet, and by all means any form of exposure to the language is considered learning. Watching your favorite K-Drama with English subtitle, listening to Taylor Swift’s new song, or maybe posting your favorite poem in your social media is i dare to say learning.
Combining all of these with our narcissistic personality to overshare things create a great flows of information to us by people who actually know what they are talking about and who don’t. Differentiating these two kind of people (speaking of my own experience) is hard. I mean you won’t even know if i am actually spitting bullshit here or do i actually know my onion.
The downside is when the mistakes are being repetitive and being done by massive number of English learner then it is going to be very hard to change them. The McD’s go to phrase “I’m loving it” is one of the classic example of what some says as the grammar abomination. The phrase is so ubiquitous that it sounds correct in our ear but if you ask any English teacher then they will give you a big no no.
Is “the death of expertise” really that bad?
In some cases it is. The existence of these sudden experts look like a curse but at the very least we got more information than what we actually need and teachers need to think about at least two questions: how to get to the truth and how to avoid misinformation. In one of his interview ,Danzel Washington was asked about “if we should watch the news or not?” He replies by saying if we watch the news we are misinformed and we don’t watch it we are uninformed. it is like choosing to be wrong or to be dumb.
In teaching English language there are areas that can clearly be categorized as right or wrong. Let say our student said “ i is student”, any English teacher would immediately find that it is not a correct sentence and probably proceed to correct the student. However there are areas of language that is considered gray. Just some of the example like the debate “i am having a cup of tea” or “i am drinking a cup of tea” ?; the“ Can you speak bahasa?” or “can you speak Indonesian?”; and do not forget the pamungkas British accent debate.
Clearly, one might think that as teachers we are probably not going to teach such things in the class but as language is dynamic product of culture hence you should think language teaching is one as well. Closest example on subject like “will vs shall” which we rarely seen it taught in the class these days compare to like 10 years ago. Maybe one should consider how to teach simple present tense don’t vs doesn’t 10 years from now based on the increasing frequency of “he/she don’t” usage in the English native speaker.
Now what i really like about this dynamic is that there is no clear definition of what “expert” means. In science in general for example (where people claiming to be expert can have a very dangerous effect), you can say it with confidence that someone like Brian Cox, Einstein, or Stephen Hawking as the expert and those who are spitting nonsense about the earth being flat or deny evolution as the fraud one. In English language however, teacher who has been teaching English for years might debate with someone who claim to be native speaker and we are allowed to be confuse who is “the expert”.
Personally, as someone who believe in the dynamic of language school’s of taught, it doesn’t bother me that much when student’s make a mistake trying to imitate popular phrases. On that note, if we look back at how English language back then, we might find differences in it with the one we are using today. Even oversharing the so called “mistakes” is also part of the language evolution and with that other aspects of language such as language teaching, Language Testing, language Course, and etc. should follow suit and not the other way around.
