Author: kathyzhang

During my short practicum, I had the opportunity to observe a grade 9 English class.   After the lesson I had a brief conversation with the teacher, during which she lamented the fact that many of her junior classes had come into high school unequipped with some of the basic language requirements expected to be met by the time they reached high school.  Some demonstrated fairly shaky understanding of some of the key features of academic writing, such as identifying parts of speech such as verbs, adjectives, proper nouns etc.

Her remedy to this was to return to the base expectations of the curriculum, building the foundations of language and giving them the basic tools of academic language before asking them write creatively or expressively.  I liken this to the arts;  a student could have grandiose ideas of  a project or piece they want to undertake, yet without the tools to enact their concepts such as an understanding of line, form, shape, shadow, tone, color etc., their voices are lost or misrepresented.  It is difficult to make the translation of thoughts and ideas into any type of language, especially academic or school writing.
One way to teach academic language is to repeat the brick words in context, and to have to students repeated the words.  Hand gestures are a great way to model language in a kinesthetic way, for example when talking about ‘form’ and shape’ having the students create forms with their hands, and then in turn asking them to describe the gesture with adjectives such as round, sharp, straight, large etc.  Perspective writing can also be another useful tool as it incorporates a theatrical quality that is fun and interactive.  Asking students to embody the person, object, or place, and having them describe something from an imaginary perspective are effective methods to add humor and imagination into the writing process.

Kathy

At this point in our education, many of us have become fairly proficient in academic reading and writing within our disciplines.  It has becomes so familiar and so far to say ingrained in our minds that it is easy to forget that this type of academic language is learned, and would not come naturally to many native English speakers, never mind English Language Learners.  I am becoming aware that some of the vocabulary and terms used in art, such as objectivity, aesthetics, formal, might have incredibly different contexts outside the discipline.

Keeping this in mind, teachers must play the careful game of simplifying and explaining complex terminology and paraphrasing them into more digestible sentences, as well as building up their tolerance to these sorts of texts.  One suggestion that I would make for the more visually inclined learners is to associate themes to colors.  For example you may ask students to group things like statements, predictions, persuasions, and questions, into red, blue, green, and purple instead of simply highlighting through an academic text.  Anything that helps make stronger connections between the words and the ideas will increase understanding of the subject.

I like the texts suggestion of using kinesthetic activities to break down complex texts.  These include the more, some might argue, intuitive gestures such as hand motions and emphasizing word intonation, as well as involving gestural metaphors, swooping hand gestures for broader concepts, abrupt or condensing motions for simpler ideas.

Kathy

October 16th 2013

I am always in admiration of teachers that can keep an energetic dialogue going in their classes.  I enjoyed what this chapter had to offer in terms of different activities and techniques to keep students equally engaged.  In my experience, especially in older grades, the classroom was, for the most part, teacher led.

An example that comes to mind that involves two of my biology teachers in high school.  One had been teaching for years, and had a very lecture based style of teaching.  She would often put up pre-prepared notes on a PowerPoint and read through them while we copied her notes.  This was done on a regular basis, and was quite a dry, formal way of presenting the material.  My other biology teacher was extremely personable and funny, through his humor he could connect well to a large group of students, keeping them engaged in the material for the majority of the class time.  Although they had very different classroom dynamics and generated different atmospheres, their teaching tactics were relatively similar: both lectured for the majority of the time.

During my education, discussion based learning in small groups within courses such as science and math were often very limited, if present in the curriculum at all.  They were much more common in classes such as English and Social Studies, but I wonder if some of the attributes of discussion based learning can be effectively applied to courses outside the humanities.  I can definitely see the merit in this type of learning especially for ELL students or even those who are not comfortable speaking in front of the larger class.  Developing academic language, as we’ve seen, is not simply limited to the courses in the humanities such as English, and disciplines like Science and Math have very specific academic languages with many brick words and technical terms.  To more fully facilitate the development of this type of language, students need practice not only hearing, but using and applying it; in this small group activities can be an effective means to encourage participation and practice.

Kathy

I think that the old adage that to the best way to learn is to teach is very much true when it comes to developing language and communication skills.  Language is such a complex and dynamic process, so much is about interpretation as well as misinterpretation, determining how best to be clear and understood.

I like Zweir’s suggestion that students should be co-teaching each other as a process of learning to better internalize and think about the content.  Sometimes students are best equipped to ask each other the most appropriate questions.  Often students are scared to voice their opinions for the fear that they will be wrong-we are taught often to search for a pre-determined answer.  As teachers we need to be careful, monitoring how we respond to questions and lead discussions.

I also like the idea of incorporating drama or theater into discussions, especially into history or social studies classes.  Having students adopt the roles of the people or issues in the discussion.  I think of Jane Elliot’s blue-eyes brown-eyes exercise in which she modeled the idea of racial segregation in her classroom by separating children into class systems dependent on their eye color.  To the blue eyed children she gave certain privileges and rewards within the classroom, and adversely took these away from the brown eyed children, often berating and criticizing their work, and encouraging similar treatment from their blue eyed peers.  The next day she reversed their status and at the end of the exercise the children displayed very emotional responses to their treatments.

Although this is a dramatic example, having children mentally transport themselves into the often weighty issues they are asked to discuss in schools is an effective way to have them be able to truly empathize and understand these concepts.  The text suggests activating these discussions through the use of controversy, simulations, and debate, all which are interesting suggestions to bring dynamism into a classroom.

Kathy Zhang

I find the distinction between oral and visual vocabulary an interesting one, the loss of translation between seeing and hearing a word is a phenomenon that, I speculate, has happened to many of us.  For example I learned the word ethereal purely through text and for years pronounced it as “ur-e-thral” until a friend corrected me.

Since English is a language made of strange amalgamations of different conquering countries, developing from Latin roots, later being invaded and colonized by North Germanic and Norman French tribes, there are some grammatical nuances that make little sense to a newcomer to the language.  For example one might question why cow turns into beef, pig to pork, and chicken to…chicken?  I had a co-worker who was a non-native English speaker that once asked me why the plural of sheep wasn’t sheeps.  I still don’t think I am capable of answering that question.  Learning the rules of the language is especially complicated because of the many ‘exceptions to the rule’ that make up the language.

In my experience, the point the article makes about poorer readers falling farther behind and stronger readers excelling at a quicker rate rings true.  Learning new vocabulary is like equipping yourself with building blocks that grow and stack upon one another.  As the reading grow more and more complex, those who have the initial foundation can continue to construct and acquire new vocabulary.  However if these gaps are already present there is no platform to build upon, new vocabulary often slips and falls away, disregarded and ignored.  This can be an extremely exasperating process for the English language learner.  One of the standard expressions of this frustration I’ve heard are things like “why can’t you say it simpler?” and “what is the point of using big complicated words I can’t understand when you could use smaller ones?”

What are some of the tools we can use to effectively teach things like grammar and vocabulary besides demanding straight memorization of the rules and all the idiosyncrasies that accompany them?  It seems as if an effect way for students to make sense of such things as homophones (e.g. batter, rose) and homographs (e.g. desert) is to provide a lot of exposure of these words in their context.  Simply explaining why rose means a perennial flower as well as the past tense of rise would is a difficult task without seeing them properly situated in a sentence.

I remember doing assignments with an Oxford’s English dictionary by my side which was incredibly time consuming.  One of the great benefits of living in this software age is the convenience of the tools that come with it.  I was impressed by the article’s suggestion about putting hyperlinks into text.  I can’t think of a more convenient way to access new vocabulary while seeing it in use.  Perhaps utilizing new technologies such as these would be an effective way to engage students in new vocabularies.

“Demonstrating comprehension rather than learning to comprehend” (Fang, Shleppegrell page 588)

This quote from the text accurately describes what I think could possibly happen in many schools in many different ways.  In my time in the K-12 public system, the “fake it ‘till you make it” attitude was a common occurrence, except that often times, I never quite made it.  Grades are a fleeting demarcation of understanding, and often times I would learn things in the most rudimentary way, then quickly forget them.

What is the defining difference between academic and casual or colloquial language? Is it the sentence structure, the use of big words, the ability to understand metaphor, allegories, allusions, etc?  The way I think of narrative compared to academic language is a layered one.  I see narrative as something more surface, perhaps going for a stroll in a park and enjoying the sights and surroundings, whereas academic language is more comparable to being at a dig site; having to slowly and carefully uncover buried artifacts in order to find meaning. Within academic language it is important to understand the context, know the terminology, sometime historical background, decode symbols, and then be able to reconstruct the meaning in a way that makes sense.

I enjoyed how the text referenced academic language as being not only exclusive to literature, but including science and mathematics as well.  Within any discipline there is, in a sense, an un-coding of information.  That is to say learning to read, write, and speak in academic language is almost like a process of translation.  In the process you are not only learning to better understand in your own previously known language, you are also developing a more complex grasp on how these two language communicate ideas in a dis-synchronous way.

Kathy Zhang

Works Referenced

Fang, Z., & Schleppegrell, M. J. (2010). Disciplinary literacies across content areas: Supporting secondary reading through functional language analysis. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53, 587–597.

Language, more specifically the English language, is fascinating form of communication. English is not a tonal language; rather the intonation and inflection of words are vital components in the construction of meaning in our sentences. Chapter two discusses the use of “prosody” (page 33) and gives a clear example of how improper emphasis of words in a paragraph muddles the message. I can imagine this being extremely difficult for English language learners, especially ones whose native languages are tonal or do not stem from any of the Germanic languages.
One of the interesting points brought up in the first few chapters was the idea of capital (social, cultural, knowledge, and linguistic) and how our institutions value them to varying degrees. It seems that without the proper tools of communication (linguistic capital) other admirable types of knowledge capital could be easily overlooked or under-appreciated, not only in school systems but in the job force, as well as social settings and navigating everyday life. If a student’s communication skills are weak or slow, they could very easily be lost in the shuffle or rushed along in an attempt to keep up the pace of a lesson, even if they have many valuable things to contribute.
When I taught preschool I had a very bright, innovative, and creative colleague who was interested in teaching English to some of our young ESL learners by engaging them through music. At the time we used a phonics program called “LetterLand” that leaned heavily on the use of narrative and song to teach basic letters, as well as blending short sounds. Perhaps these types of tools could be very useful in older classrooms as well in a more sophisticated way, especially for those who are still acclimatizing to the language. I feel that these sorts of strategies need not be limited to ESL students, but rather to any individual struggling with learning to speak and write academic English.
http://www.letterland.com/

Kathy Zhang