Author: Sandy S

Chapter 8

I like the idea that teachers need to teach grammar in context. As a former ELL student, I felt the disconnection between the grammar I was supposed to learn from the grammar worksheets and the essays I was writing in the English and Social Studies classes. One of my former students whom I tutored expressed her concern that while she was able to get correct answers on the grammar practice worksheets, she lacked the skills (ironically) to write grammatically correct sentences for her essays. Furthermore, I like the point that ELLs need to draw linguistic knowledge from good essay models. Teachers need to spend time with the students to point out the qualities that make a good essay for ELLs to model after. Since ELLs do not have the linguistic capital that mainstream speakers have due to their lack of exposure to a wide range of texts, teachers need to provide them the products that they are asked to create. Finally, teachers need to explicitly tell the students the difference between oral communication (which uses basic interpersonal communication skills or BICS) and writing in academic language (which requires cognitive academic language proficiency or CALP). Teachers need to tell the students that while the teacher may repeat key points during the lesson, such repetition is discouraged in formal essays. It is important that teachers do not assume ELLs to naturally pick up on the differences in the rules between the different genres (personal writing vs. formal essay) and modes of communication (writing vs. speaking).

Chapter 6: Academic Listening and Speaking in Small Groups

I really like the coloured strips that Chelsea handed out to us in class for our discussion on our language experiences. The phrases on the coloured strips helped to facilitate conversation because they provide the starting point. When I read about the connective phrases that students could use to improve discussions on page 143 of Zwiers’ chapter, I thought about adapting the coloured strips to facilitate content-based conversations. I also like the point about how teachers need to make conversations more academic by “[modelling] for students how to turn an informal conversation into a more formal, academic one.”(145). A good strategy is to use discussion cards that contain organizational phrases to remind students to use them in discussions. Another strategy is to use MOPKAL (my role, other role, the problem, the knowledge that need to role-play, what we need to do or accomplish by talking, language to use) in role plays (149). Role-playing increases the level of interest, engages students, and enhances learning through negotiation of meaning in the process. In our EDUC 450 seminar class, a group did their presentation on performative inquiry and it was fascinating to see how engaged people were when the actors on stage were the students themselves. By directing the spotlight away from the teacher and refocusing on group activities that involve role-playing, students are able to find a new way of learning the content.

Chapter 7: Language for Academic Reading

I really liked the example of putting fingers of one hand under the palm of the other to make a table as a way of showing evidence to make an argument stand. One piece of evidence is one leg, so the less number of legs (pieces of evidence), the weaker the table (argument). I also notice that I myself am able to focus more on what I’m trying to say when I accompany my speech with body language (gestures, movements of the body). Of course, excessive gestures or movements (especially if they are quickly done) may become a source of distraction to the students.

The analyzing the text strategy is especially for ELL students when they are prepping for tests. They must become familiar with the language of the test in order to do well. When I was an ESL student in high school, I didn’t do well on the exams because I didn’t understand the questions being asked. Gradually, the phrases that appear on the exams become internalized and I was able to do better on the exams.

The Have You Ever strategy (189) can be pretty useful for tackling vocabulary in the reading. By placing difficult words within a question that starts with “Have you ever…” the student could provide answers based on their personal life experiences, as opposed to having the teacher make up random sentences that are irrelevant to the students’ own contexts. I can see this as a practical strategy to make new vocabulary more accessible and relevant for the students.

“teachers in most schools around the world use many more display questions than open-ended questions. This might be due in part to the fact that most standardized tests are made up of right-or-wrong (display) questions that cover discrete pieces of knowledge and low-level skills.”

I feel compelled to critique this quote. Though I don’t completely agree with the philosophy of standardized tests and am not fond of them myself, answers for standardized tests are less arguable since they require relatively more objective answers than open-ended questions. This is why sometimes students fond of science do not particularly enjoy English exams because “it’s too open-ended” (I’m trained in the humanities, by the way) and the marking is “too subjective”. Of course, this is in the context of examination (written work). In the context of classroom academic oral discussion, I would imagine that, for the sake of the overall smoothness of the lesson, the ratio of display to open-ended questions would still result in a number greater than 1. While I agree and believe that teachers need to help students develop critical thinking skills, I have a hard time imagining that a class would go well when students are all over the place with their answers for open-ended questions. This may sound extreme, but for discussions about open-ended questions to go well the teacher would have to be experienced, have strong communication skills and excellent skills in managing different points of view. Also, I can picture a class of academically driven and intellectually motivated elite students who want to go to university after high school responding rapidly to open-ended questions…but what about those students who are not used to open-ended questions? What if answering open-ended questions is not the way they learn? What about those who are already struggling with understanding “discrete pieces of knowledge” and mastering what the author calls “low-level skills”? After all, a high school classroom is not a university seminar. However, I wonder if open-ended questions could be left for students to discuss and contemplate near the end of a lesson. In sum, the quantity of open-ended questions the teacher asks the class would depend on the language and academic level of the students, as well as cultural factors.

For some ELLs, as I mentioned in the last post, arguing and taking a side on an issue may not be something they are used to doing in the culture they came from, and so it may be the case that open-ended questions would confuse them. Furthermore, giving too many open-ended questions potentially threatens the teacher’s authority (I understand for some teachers this may not be an issue, as they see a different kind of power dynamics between the teacher and the student). In some cultures, if the teacher asks a lot of open-ended questions, the student may doubt the teacher’s competence. Hence, an appropriate quantity of open-ended questions is important.

In any case, I want to know your perspective on the debate of display vs. open-ended questions. Would you be, as a teacher candidate, comfortable giving open-ended questions in class and to what extent would you give them? What is the ratio of display and open-ended questions and where do we find the balance? Does your answer vary for different disciplines?

            “Yet many diverse students struggle to understand persuasive elements, due in part to their lack of experience in reading and talking about controversial issues. Indeed, some cultures avoid any type of confrontation in public.” (p.75).

This quote sums up my experience. I never understood why we had to write persuasive essays in high school. I understood expository essays. Describe and explain? No problem. Take a side and make an argument? Problem.

I didn’t grow up in an environment in which taking a side on an issue in a discussion is an important, valued skill. I was implicitly taught that making counterarguments is synonymous with rebelling against authority figures. Arguing means open fire, consequently, disturbing the superficial peace between people. At school, debate was certainly not on my teacher’s agenda. The first and only time I participated in a debate was in my grade 11 social studies class. It was brief but memorable for whatever reason. Looking at my high school years, on the whole I lived in my own little universe struggling to conquer the English language. The political and social issues beyond the walls of my home and school—the comfort zones—were outside of me.

It was not until university that it hit me why it is important to discuss controversial issues. They concern people’s lives. Not just one person but many, many people. I met interesting people who are rebellious in their thinking. They are able to use academic language to express their viewpoints. I was then enlightened that learning English is not just about learning the grammar. It’s more than that. It is a way of empowering oneself to express through the use of academic language.

The lesson in Chapter 4 is incredibly important. ELLs are not learning academic expressions for the sake of learning them. Yes, they are learning them to pass courses so they can graduate from high school and move onto post-secondary education. Their ability to use academic expressions deeply affects their future, as Chelsea pointed out in class. It affects them on the professional, social and political levels. It affects the job they get, their social life, and the extent of their influence in political discussions that impact their lives. We need to learn how to scaffold to help ELLs master academic expressions so they can be empowered to make a difference for themselves and the world.

Lehr et al. raises a fascinating question in the article—how many words do students need to know to achieve comprehension? What constitutes an “extensive” vocabulary? To answer this question, we need to first put the word “vocabulary” in context. One could have extensive vocabulary in either academic (in specific disciplines) or non-academic context. Furthermore, it is important to consider the purpose behind having an extensive vocabulary. From a critical perspective, it seems that this “extensiveness” has implications for privileging certain groups of people while excluding others. In other words, a person who has an extensive vocabulary in a particular academic field is better able to maintain his/her status within that field (or within the class that esteems that field) than someone who does not. This is also the case for a person with extensive vocabulary in a non-academic field. In both cases, the purpose is to legitimize specialized knowledge through the possession and use of extensive vocabulary.

I am a bit disappointed by the fact that reviews of classroom intervention studies have suggested that no more than 8 to 10 words can be effectively taught each week. I have grown up learning the English language by memorizing a lot of vocabulary every week. Though there is no way of knowing how much vocabulary I have retained, I did arrive at the conclusion that knowing a word is more than spelling, defining and pronouncing it correctly. From a sociolinguistic perspective, the spelling, definition and pronunciation are in fact unstable elements of a word because they are socially constructed, have been shaped and changed over the course of the history. In short, in order to know a word, we must see it in different social and historical contexts. Hence, the student needs to be exposed to the word in a variety of contexts (that is, both inside and outside of the classroom) as much as possible to draw out the–perhaps inexhaustible–riches in the meaning of the word. I like this quote: “Knowing a word is a matter of degree rather than an all-or-nothing proposition. The degrees of knowing a word are reflected in the precision with which we use a word, how quickly we understand a word, and how well we understand and use words in different modes (receptive, productive) and for different purposes.”.

Finally, I like the strategy of Text Talk where the teacher draws from the student’s knowledge and experiences outside of the classroom and connect that to explaining the meaning of a word in the classroom. The concept of decontextualizing book language (the language that represents ideas and concepts) seems quite useful, as teachers are encouraged to go beyond having the students read aloud the text by engaging in meaningful, productive teacher-student talk that accompanies the reading to achieve a fuller comprehension.

According to Fang, the purpose of functional language analysis is to provide a metalanguage (“the language for talking about language”) to help students understand the choices that academic writers make as they write clauses, sentences and texts (p. 588). The metalanguage is especially important for ELLs in classes like science, history and mathematics where “technical and abstract vocabulary and sentences made up of embedded clauses that create a dense and compacted presentation of information” (p. 589). As a teacher candidate who has English as a Second Language as a teachable subject, I feel this article has several implications for my teaching. First, all teachers need to be conscious of the new language patterns in the disciplines with which the ELLs will be in contact. Fang says that the literacy development work cannot be the sole responsibility of the language arts teacher. Secondly, such a linguistic approach to academic text would enable the students to be critical of the text they are reading, as they gain a deeper understanding of how language is used to persuade the reader, legitimize scientific writing, and offer perspectives. On the one hand, I see how the ELLs could benefit from such linguistic analysis of academic writing. On the other, I am uncertain how such a seemingly detailed, sophisticated activity could be incorporated into a science or mathematics class without straying away from the main point of the lesson. While this approach can be useful, I am wondering how practical it is for the real world classroom.

The topic I found interesting is the features of academic grammar. I remember that uneasy feeling I experienced first year in undergrad when I began to read the academic textbooks, articles and papers. It took a number of years for me to become accustomed to reading academic writing. The features of academic writing are long sentences, passive voice, nominalization and condensed complex messages. Students need to be taught to break down clauses and to focus on the main point of the sentence. While I believe it is important for ELL learners who are just starting to learn English to be aware of how clauses function, I would not choose readings that involve strings of clauses just to get them warmed up. I feel that would likely frustrate them, just as I was. We need to gradually increase the doses of clauses and not overburden the ELLs right off the bat. Besides, I personally feel some long sentences are simply unnecessarily complicated. Complex sentences with a lot of subordinating conjunctions can be broken down into smaller parts. The point is whatever subject(s) we teach, our lessons (and choice of text, especially for English class) need to adjust to the student’s level of academic language; the lessons need to be student-centered.

When I reached third year, I met this English professor who discouraged us to use the passive voice because, according to her handout, her “attention span is restricted by this practice” since “it is used to make the paper sound as though it is written with authority”. She points out the actual effect of using the passive voice is putting the reading process in slow motion. I cannot agree more. So there, even professors who use academic language do not necessarily all agree on the taken-for-granted rules!

Nominalization is wonderful. As the text says, the purpose is to pack higher levels of abstraction into one sentence. I feel it is important for ELLs to learn how verbs and nouns convert to adjectives, and also how they are nominalized. They need to be aware of the different forms of a word in order to extract the abstract meanings packed in the sentence.

Finally, I like this quote: “Students can try to be overly academic at the expense of clarity. We all have seen papers and books whose authors have overcomplicated the language of a text or speech to the point of sounding pretentious or stilted. They use sentences that are too long, they use too many clauses and ‘SAT words’, and the message ends up being too concentrated or muddy to make sense to the reader or listener.” (p.39). Our objective in teaching ELLs academic language is not to have them embellish their writing with unnecessary clauses and dangling nominalized terms that obscure the meaning. Our objective is help them to express their ideas, logic and thoughts with clarity and precision, whether on an academic paper or in formal oral speech.