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Week 1 – Chapter One Blog Post

The chapter one reading for this course highlights the academic language skills of diverse learners in the twenty-first century classroom in connection with their family life and home.  Furthermore, this reading discusses the problem teachers overlooking the skills and strengths of diverse learners and devaluing their academic language skills.

It was very interesting reading the section titled “Valuing and challenging diverse learners.”  Zwiers explains that there is a preference for academic language and literacy practices in school and work settings.  Why does this preference exist?  Zwiers says that it is a “social reality that dominant socioeconomic and political groups strongly influence what is valued in a society” (Zwiers 11).  Many students from “non-mainstream” backgrounds are not exposed to the same language and literacy experiences at home that students from “mainstream” backgrounds will have been exposed to at home.  In general, teachers expect students from all backgrounds to use the same style of academic writing that a middle or upper class student might use.  Although students from diverse backgrounds may not produce writing that looks “mainstream,” the content of their work may contain valuable thoughts and ideas that are useful for classroom discussion and learning.  I think that teachers should be fostering the language skills of diverse learners in order to give them the opportunity to speak out and share their ideas.  Sometimes students from diverse backgrounds are not given the opportunity to communicate their thoughts and opinions at home.  Therefore, school gives them the outlet needed to articulate these ideas and enhance these skills for future schooling and work.

Zwiers also referred to this concept of academic language preference in his chapter reflection questions as “language-ism” (Zwiers 17) and questioned if it was possible to say that it is more prevalent than racism.  I thought that this was an interesting parallel.  I think that language-ism could very well be more prevalent than racism.  Teachers assess assignments on a daily basis with their personal biases in mind.  If you do not fit the rubric for “mainstream” academic language, then your work is considered less worthy of a good grade.  I think particularly in the English subject that teachers need to be extremely careful about the way they grade papers.  It is important to focus on thoroughly examining the content of the work before judging the work based on general flow and presentation.

By:Erin Milne

Reading the first chapter has really encouraged me to think about teaching and the home economics classroom. I agree with Zwiers (2008) that when teaching it is important to take into consideration the diverse backgrounds that students come from. Recipes used in the home-ec classroom will often contain cooking terms that students may not be familiar with and that many cookbooks today have replaced with directions instead. Cooking terms used often describe an important technique that is necessary to know if someone were to be successful in making the product. It is then very important that the term is clearly demonstrated and defined for the students before expecting them to use the terms and to know what to do during a lab when they see it on their recipe. The cooking term ‘fold’ for example may be a confusing one as it has a meaning outside of cooking (for example, folding a piece of paper). However, in cooking it means to use a rubber spatula to combine ingredients by gently lifting from bottom to top so that air bubbles are preserved. If a student making a foam cake such as an angel food cake did not use the technique, their angel food cake will likely not have the texture or the appearance of one where the technique of folding was used. I know for myself, I was not familiar with most of the cooking terms before I started taking foods classes in high school. Even though I cooked a lot at home, most of the cooking terms that I knew were all in Chinese and the foods that I made at home with my family were different too. This chapter has definitely given me a lot to consider when teaching. It has really got me thinking about language used in recipes, how recipes can be written (eg. in paragraphs, in sentences etc. ) and which form may be more accessible to students, and to be more aware of what I may be omitting and what needs to be included when providing instructions and when communicating with students.

This first chapter of Zwiers’ text Building Academic Language: Essential Practices for Content Classrooms has really prompted me to consider my acquisition of academic language and how my background and experience will vary greatly in comparison to the students that I teach. Having been drawn to language arts from a young age, I hadn’t really considered all of the factors at play in my upbringing that eventually lead me to pursue theatre and English in a teaching capacity. While I have always appreciated the benefits of growing up with English as my primary language knowing that it has been advantageous in the learning process, I hadn’t thought of many other factors that Zwiers brings attention to. My “mainstream” upbringing provided me with a world of knowledge that was fostering my English academic growth (Zwiers 1, 2). I’ve had the advantage of a large family that has encouraged deep discussions around the dinner table; toys and games that were specifically designed to foster growth in the English language; exposure to television, movies and books; extra-curricular activities that furthered my experience interacting with others and putting my language skills to use; the list goes on.

I think it is imperative as a teacher to have an understanding that in any given classroom, the students will be coming from all walks of life and vastly different backgrounds and upbringings. In order for every student to learn and grow, it is necessary to recognize the needs of individuals and adapt teaching strategies accordingly. One idea from the text that really resonated with me was that “Devaluing students’ ways of making sense of the world also devalues them” (Zwiers 11). If a teacher were to only value the language comprehension and expression of students that demonstrate mainstream level academic discourse, the result is always going to marginalize and devalue any students that do not meet those expectations, thereby creating a learning environment that would not encourage participation from all students. This is something I will pay attention to in my teaching, to be sure that every student will be given that sense of value regardless of the level at which they are expressing themselves.

My first impression after doing the readings was that I am so glad we are required to learn about how to better teach English language learners. Many of the concerns and ideas brought up are things I haven’t thought about before, but are very important to consider as a future educator. Something that stuck out for me to reflect on in chapter 1 was the idea that we all come from varied backgrounds with many influences on our development of academic language. I know I sometimes I take for granted all the privileges I have had in my life which had allowed me to develop strong English language skills. Some other points in the textbook also called on me to reflect on these same influences for how they might affect my relationships with students in how I grade them, teach them and so on. Starting to be aware of these influence more closely should surely lead to less bias in my teaching. Chapter 2 offered some problems in the way that we teach academic language to students and how difficult it can be to develop academic language skills in students. Chapter 3 offers some solutions to these problems. The sample dialogue was helpful in understanding how to model some of the example solutions. My group is presenting on these chapters on Wednesday so I hope we will be able to delve deeper into these ideas then.

How the home environment affects children and their learning so drastically is a very interesting concept. It is evident that home environments have a big role on how children grow up and these environments contribute greatly to their personality. However, I never realized the role the home environment could have in a student’s classroom learning experience. Growing up in a middle-class English speaking family, I was exposed to reading and writing at a young age. Because my mother is a teacher, she was very articulate when speaking and that is where I learned the majority of my language. What I found interesting from the text is considering what would have happened if I went to a school where English was not the dominate language. Say for instance I went to a French school; I would not have had the background knowledge from a young age and I would not feel confident speaking or interacting with others in French. I am surprised that I never realized this before reading this chapter, but those who do not grow up in English-speaking houses, or home environments where they have not been exposed to stories and books, will have a much harder time in school.

This is an issue that teachers need to be aware of to be able to assist those students. Zwiers’ point about how teachers need to make the expectations clear for students in the classroom and how they need to teach students about academic English, is important to help students feel confident and comfortable in their school environment (2008). Teachers need to be aware of the different students in their classrooms and focus on students as individuals and realize what they need to do to help each student succeed.

These points are important when in a physical education environment since there are a lot of terms that not all students will know. For example, the term advancement; moving forward towards a goal line in a game, will not be known by all students, and teachers must explain the definition of the word before moving forward with the activity.

Zwiers, J. (2008). Understanding how students use language. In Building academic language: Essential practices for content classrooms (Ch. 1, pp 11-15). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

The introductory chapter of the Zwiers text highlights the connection between students’ academic language skills and the social and cultural context of their home environment. The text mentions that it is common for teachers to expect a certain level of academic language in the classroom which may not have been explicitly taught in school. Given this, students whose home environments differ drastically from the school environment will be at a disadvantage, namely children of non-mainstream families (e.g. those with English language learner parents). The problematic element of this expectation is that academic language proficiency may often be linked with academic performance; teachers may fall into the habit of grading content based on language abilities. I feel that content and expression should be separately graded, especially if there is a wide range of social, cultural and linguistic backgrounds in the classroom. This separated assessment may allow teachers to distinguish more clearly whether the student is struggling with the content taught or the language necessary to express his or her ideas.

In relation to English (one of my specializations), expression usually plays a decisive role in academic performance at the high school level: those students who communicate in ways other than a linear, topic-driven fashion will be reprimanded as being “unclear”; however, many cultures express ideas in nonlinear ways, therefore it is important to acknowledge the value of different patterns of expression in different contexts. Like Zwiers points out, it is beneficial to approach teaching academic language as providing another register of expression to the student’s repertoire rather than as teaching to replace. However, it is nonetheless important to guide students in recognizing the appropriate registers in different settings. While acknowledging the student’s own way of expression as legitimate in certain contexts, the teacher may focus on academic language properties that are necessary to express more complex and abstract ideas in formal settings.

Lucy Yang

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