LLED 360

As my instructor talked about how hard it is to understand mathematics if students are not familiar with the language it is being taught in, I recalled my own experience of my first day in Grade 10 math class just after I immigrated to Canada. I didn’t know what SOH CAH TOA was since I learned it in different language even though I’ve already learned trigonometry in Korea before I came. I asked my classmates who were in the same ESL class with me what SOH CAH TOA was, and their answers were “I don’t know either.” I was embarrassed about the fact that the activities of that entire class were about solving problems using SOH CAH TOA. My classmates who didn’t understand what SOH CAH TOA stood for were doing homework from another class. I asked my teacher what SOH CAH TOA was, and he explained that it is a way of remembering how to compute the sine, cosine, and tangent of an angle, and that each acronym stood for something, like SOH being Sine equal Opposite over Hypotenuse. Even after realizing what SOH CAH TOA is, I felt that it was difficult because “Hypotenuse” was a new vocabulary to me. My math teacher realized that I was having trouble with English, not with Math. So, before he started his lessons, he drew a triangle, and he labelled it as opposite, adjacent and hypotenuse to visualize it, and he tried to simplify the questions with easier words when I encountered the word problems in class. Also, before the beginning of each lesson he made a worksheet full of terminologies we were going to learn with definitions, so I would have easier time in becoming familiar with those terminologies. He didn’t only focus on teaching mathematics, but he also helped me to learn English. Only now can I truly appreciate how what a considerable teacher he was in being encouraging and patient with me. It also goes to show that language can be a real barrier in teaching math, but that it can be overcome with the right effort and attitude in both the instructor and the student.

I felt that chapter four in “Building Academic Language”, presented in a useful manner, the way each discipline uses language.  I have never thought in great depth about how each discipline uses language differently, but looking back at my own high school experience discipline specific language was of great importance.  From a young age I was very interested in Science, but in the later years of high school, I struggled with many terms relating to the discipline.  The part that struck me in the chapter was the statement that “too many schools see language development as the responsibility of the language arts or English teacher”.  This is a big problem, as I recall from my high school days, that language related to certain disciplines such as Science was definitely not taught in English class.  In regards to the section relating to History, it is important to give our students the skills so that they can think critically about past events that they will learn.  Our students must be able to take information from a variety of sources and then come to an idea of what they think really happened, rather than blindly believing what the text or teacher tells them.  Furthermore, Zwiers mentions the importance of interpretation in History, and how we must piece together clues from the past in order to come to an idea of what really happened.

I thought that Chapter 4, “Content-Area Variations of Academic Language” was a good way to get us thinking about the differences in language use across disciplines. Also, thinking about the use of language in our own disciplines is important, as so many of the terms or phrases we may use do not seem complicated or confusing to us since we are so accustomed to hearing and using them ourselves.  The idea of “expert blind spots” was a good reminder of how we need to be aware of our use of language in the classroom, especially when considering our ELLs.  We need to remember that ELL students are facing language challenges in all of their classes, not just ours, which means they are trying to make sense of and learn a variety of types of language that may not always cross disciplines. As a social studies teacher, I enjoyed reading the section on history and it really made me think about the range of opportunity within the social studies discipline for students to learn and use academic language.  For example, a major focus of history is analyzing and interpreting a variety of sources to put together the full picture of a historical event, a process that will give students the opportunity to think critically and find new meanings in academic language.

I found this chapter very helpful to think about my own use of language and questions. I was particularly interested in the author’s criticism of teacher questioning and the way in which questions are overused and often rhetorical. I think that this is probably common for teachers because of their experience as a student. It is a kind of default teacher way of speaking.  Building academic language for my discipline, Visual Art, I think would be as challenging as with the examples in the language arts, science and mathematics but because the output or assignments are expressed as a visual literacy rather than a linguistic one, we might overlook the language element and neglect to build up our student’s academic language. While the emphasis on visual rather than written in art may be welcoming for English language learners, I think art has a special ability to strengthen language in that it is inherently multimodal and connections with visuals, ideas and language can be strengthened.

Meghan Leeburn

September 22 (sorry blog troubles)

I worry about the use of the English language and how it can create a de-valuing of certain students’ home languages when their mother tongue is not valued in school settings. I worry about the hierarchy that can be created and that students might not develop unique kinds of knowledge that are specific to their languages. This also has significant implications for the aboriginal population in Canada and how our institutions are in effect continuing with a colonization through language. As a visual arts teacher candidate I have a few ideas about how I could attempt to address some of these concerns in my own teaching practice. I think I would like to allow students to work in their visual journals through the planning process in their mother tongues. I think this would provide the opportunity to use the knowledge and experience they bring from their home language into their planning and process work and ultimately into their artwork.

Meghan Leeburn

How would you mark this?

These questions are meant to get you started. You need not follow them, for your brief post about this chapter, but if you need a place to begin, here are some ideas….

1.. On page 87, Zwiers provides an excellent chart, with the steps of scientific inquiry and the related language for each step. What are some of the “steps” in your own discipline, and what is the language you might use?

2. What subregisters of academic language did you excel in in your own education, and why? Where did you struggle, and what strategies would have supported your learning?

3. What are some general academic terms and phrases used across content areas? Does your discipline share meaning with another discipline for particular academic terms and phrases? Where, in your discipline, is there language that might mean something else outside of <home ec> or <algebra> or <theatre>?

As a Social Studies teacher focusing on History, I believe firmly that History at its most rich and vibrant, is about meaning-making. There is a constructive and creative element involved. It is a discipline that aims to infer, interpret, and understand what happened in the past. Therefore to make meaning of what happened and to build an interpretation of the past, requires an adept mastery of language. History, at its most banal is about “one damn fact after another.” For students who are ELL, if history is taught in this boring way and simply as a transmission of facts, then they truly miss out on the richness of history and the power and art of words to help plunder that richness. However, the reality is that the discipline deals at times with abstract concepts, long textual passages, and a difficulty of demonstration. Therefore it is crucial to make history tangible and coherent for ELL and all learners.

Schleppegrell, Achugar, & Oteiza offer some practical but challenging avenues to do this. They emphasize encouraging students to make connections through different types of meaning. Experiential meaning is to identify the events and the themes involved. The interpersonal meaning will help clarify who and to whom action is happening to or coming from. The textual meaning is to take all this information and put it together in an organized manner. As a teacher, I can model and co-construct with the class the building of, the organization of, and the presentation of history. Instead of doing this in an essay format or by breaking down long passages, perhaps I could do a storyboard format ––allowing the students to more visually and graphically express and organize their thoughts. I think there is potential in using language through a more concrete and creative element of story rather than disconnected facts. History has the potential to be a discipline in which effective language learning can happen, and where fruitful content can be explored through the beautiful usage of words.

Michael Yang

Chapter four introduces the readers to four different disciplines of academia where different language needs to be used. As stated in the chapter, it is very important for teachers to develop pedagogical content knowledge, and really understand how a novice learner feels when they are learning the discipline’s language. It is important for teachers not to lose site of the fact that their students are at a different level than they are, and that teachers need to teach to the novice learner.
Although the chapter focused on learning language for Science, Mathematics, Language Arts, and History, I believe that these concepts can be used in my discipline of Physical Education. For instance when teaching team games, cause and effect is very important to understand the tactics and strategies surrounding sport. An example of cause and effect that a teacher could use would be:

T: “Ok Jimmy, if Matt is advancing towards the goal line with the ball, where would the best place for you to move to as a support player?”
S: “I should go beside Matt.”
T: “Ok so if you move towards Matt, where will your defender go?”
S: “He will follow me.”
T: “Correct he will follow you towards Matt and the ball, and then there will be two defenders on Matt, his and yours. What about if you moved away from Matt towards the sidelines to provide width, where would your defender go?”
S: “He would follow me, and then Matt would only have one defender on him.”
T: “Exactly, so because Matt would only have one defender on him, he would have more time and space with the ball to look for the best passing option.”

It is important that when teaching, teachers use different cue words and specific language to help direct student’s thinking. Physical Education is an example of a discipline where teachers can use different language strategies to help students understand the concepts. As well as cause and effect, interpretation would also be good to help students understand what their opponent’s team is doing. All in all, it is really important for teachers to understand that learning language does not only happen in English, but it must be continuously incorporated into all subject matter.

I found this chapter to be quite relatable to my personal experience of learning the different subject areas.  I remember taking a class in Grade 5 called “Language Arts” not knowing when the subjects actually transitioned to “Language Arts”.  I didn’t know what “Language Arts” meant but for some reason, I always did well in that subject.  I remember a keen emphasis from the teacher in regards to the grammar, punctuation, and spelling that we were learning.  I absorbed this information with ease but realized that as I advanced on to the higher grades, success in the lower grades (in Language arts, math, and sciences) did not necessarily translate into success in the higher grades.  The big shock came when I entered into Grade 8 math class.  I was enrolled in an enriched math class, unbeknownst to me, by my Grade 7 teacher.  The very first day we had to take an assessment test that I was not prepared for.  After receiving a dismal mark, my self-esteem plummeted.  We were told that if we passed with a 50%, we were able to skip Grade 8 math and move onto Grade 9.  Luckily (or not so luckily), I passed the assessment test and I was thrown into Grade 9 math.  Starting off that year with a poor mark signaled to me that I was not ready for Grade 8 math let alone Grade 9.  I struggled greatly because of the unfamiliar terminology that was used.  The teacher’s style of teaching was very fast and weeded out the not-so-smart ones like myself.  There was no effort made to teach any of the abstract concepts or borrowed “mathematical” terms to us.  It was assumed that either you knew it or you didn’t.  Needless to say I dropped out of that class to be in a “normal” math class but my confidence was already shattered.  Being behind and now having to “catch” up in a regular math class took adjustment and an effort on my part to retrain myself to think in the language of mathematics.  I found that with independent study, I could finally understand how diagrams with abstract concepts worked together.  My grades began to improve and suddenly, I could be “OK” at math again.  I just needed a bit of tutelage and a new way of framing math problems to succeed.

I also struggled with chemistry but I was very good at biology.  Chemistry required some more complex manipulations and not just rote memorization.  I had been trained my whole life to regurgitate facts so when it came time to apply what I had learned, I would fail.  High school was a difficult time in many ways but it was also a time when I understood that success in different disciplines required looking and approaching them in their own way.  The ability to grasp technical terms was crucial in aiding my understanding of big concepts.  In this chapter, Zwiers really demonstrates the need for all teachers to be language teachers first, then discipline specific application second.