LLED 360

There was a lot of emphasis in the article “A Focus on Vocabulary” on the importance of reading and being read to at an early age when learning a new language. This triggered reflections for me on the many ways my parents taught me language. From a young age mom wold take my sisters and I to the library on a weekly basis to take out as many and whatever books we wanted. My parents would then read to us every night before bed. I grew up with a love of reading and enthusiasm for learning. I am sure this can be largely attributed to these early routines in language learning. I feel very lucky that I had these positive experiences with language.

Lehrer et. al. mention a statistic based on socio economic status and language learning, “Hart and Risley (1995) found, for example, that 3year-olds in higher socioeconomic status (SES) families had vocabularies as much as five times larger than children in lower SES families” (p. 6). This statistic made me slightly uncomfortable in reading it. I think it is partly because I hope it does not perpetuate stereotypes of lower SES families as being illiterate or uneducated. Poverty should not always result in “word poverty”. I also think it made me reflect on the privileges I have had in my life. In regards to students who’s parents are ELLs as well, how can students improve their English outside of school without the aid of their parents or reinforcement of English at home? It is clear to me that it is not an easy task if the learner is older and does not have the advantage of rigorous language training and picture books that come with early childhood.

Through reading the article I was relieved to see a long list of concrete strategies that teachers can put into practice for their ELLs.
Some strategies that I see working for me include using synonyms, concept maps, dictionaries, word consciousness, and teaching about cognates. As a future art teacher I have never previously thought about making language learning an active focus in my classroom. Through these readings and class discussions I have realized how important it is. I also feel confident that I can work some of these strategies into my teaching without making too much of a sacrifice from other tasks. In the long run, I believe it will enrich classroom discussion and the life long success in learning for my students. I may even take them to the library…

The title of my post is a reference to the song in the television show Arthur. Here is the link to the song:
http://youtu.be/lg516PSgG5I

In the article A Focus on Vocabulary by Lehr, Osborn and Hiebert, I was particularly interested in the concept of “knowing” and acquiring “ownership” of words. I have found myself pondering my own vocabulary bank and how it came to be, as explained “[k]nowing a word by sight and sound and knowing its dictionary definition are not the same as knowing how to use the word correctly and understanding it when it is heard or seen in various contexts” (3). My own incidental word learning was brought to my attention recently in my volunteer classroom experience. While in the process of contributing to some class conversation on their discussion topic, the teacher interrupted me and asked if I could please explain what the word “rationalize” means to the class. I knew the purpose of this was to have the students understand this potentially new word in the context of my conversation. However, I was surprised at my awkward attempt to be able to define the word in a way that would make sense to the students! This was certainly a word that I understood and could use in a specific context, but I had a difficult time defining it in a simplistic way. In my first attempt, I had used a few synonyms to give meaning. While this method does work and is usually my go-to tool in my own learning, I quickly realized that I had just given them a bunch of other words that perhaps were just as new as “rationalize.” To my relief, the teacher stepped in to help with a couple examples of how a person might “rationalize something.” I will remember this method in my own teaching of new vocabulary. I think that teaching vocabulary by giving examples either through lessons, discussion and/or activities is a powerful way to develop understanding and accumulation of words.

Sara Martens

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.

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.

I was always aware that vocabulary is important to develop a student’s reading comprehension but I was not aware of the extent to which the two are related. Reading how vocabulary can help provide students a “bridge between the word-level processes of  phonics and the cognitive processes of comprehension” makes it even more apparent how important it is for educators to make sure they us academic language in their classrooms. This would be especially helpful for ELL students.

The above is very applicable to math teachers as well. The article mentions that the majority of word learning is done through incidental learning where students are either read to or are reading books on their own. I think that math vocabulary would be more difficult to learn this way than the vocabulary from many other disciplines and I say this for several reasons. First of all, I believe that there are going to be less instances where math jargon appears in the types of books students are more likely to be reading or have read to them. Because of this, they are less likely to be exposed to the academic words related to the discipline which means students will have less opportunity to learn these words via incidental learning. The second reason I feel this way is because a large proportion of mathematical terms have more than one meaning (are multidimensional) in English which can cause confusion for students and negatively affect their reading comprehension. Many of the words with multiple meanings are ones that students are likely to encounter before they reach the level of math where they are required to apply them in their mathematical context. The article uses the example of the word ‘volume’. Chances are high that students will understand ‘volume’ in its musical context before they encounter the word in a mathematical setting. Math vocabulary includes many other words that have multiple meanings (function, series, factor, mean, mode, median, power, expression, root, etc) which have the possibility of to make applying these words in their mathematical context harder for some students, particularly ELLs.

Because of the challenges listed above, I think it is especially important for math teachers to make sure they spend enough time working on academic language in the classroom for students to establish a proficient vocabulary. I think direct instruction is a good means of achieving this but even more, I like the idea of a think aloud. As mentioned in the article, a variety of methods is the best way for students to improve their vocabulary and, in turn, their reading comprehension however I like the idea of a think aloud because it helps with vocabulary as well as with showing students tips for how to approach a math question. In the end, regardless of how it is done, intentional word learning is going to play an important role in developing the vocabulary of a math student.

Teaching ELLs (English Language Learners) has always been something on my mind ever since considering a profession in teaching, a lot of which I learned through LLED 489B last semester. Something that was brought to my attention is how we validate our students’ understanding in classroom participation. Zwiers says that it is not enough to just correct what was said because it was phrased wrong even though the answer is correct, but that “we must create learning spaces for our diverse students so that they build from what they have and add the knowledges and language skills needed in future school and work” (12). Each student brings something different to the classroom, and for the most part, they are things that come from experiences at home or with their friends. The question is how do we value a student’s contribution in class and at the same time challenge the student in expanding his/her academic vocabulary.

Going through the three first chapters of Zwiers’s book was an enlightening re-visit to my own educational experiences. Chapter 1 made me realize the contribution of the social context in which I was raised to the development of my academic knowledge. It was certainly revealing to find out that the stage of academic thinking I have reached is only possible because of the social, cultural, knowledge, and linguistic capital that I acquired outside of the school environment. In turn, by precisely defining what academic language is, Chapter 2 allowed me to identify my academic capacity amongst other personal traits, and so recall which were the influences of my schooling in shaping them. Finally, Chapter 3 enabled me to recognize which strategies my educators used to stimulate my development.

The information provided in the chapters empowered me to look back to my past critically and understand the purposes and implications of many situations I have lived. Thus, I was able to attribute meaning to these situations, and hence resuscitate numerous memories that were in the “useless data sector” of my brain, such as some old teacher’s explanation or some family games we used to play. These memories will be important guidance to my professional practice, since they constitute significant references that I can either emulate or avoid throughout my teaching career.

Vitor Giberti

Language for Academic Thinking

Chapter two in “Building Academic Language” delves into the topic of academic language.  It begins by defining the differences between social language (the less complex language used to build relationships) and academic language (more complex abstract language).  The most interesting part of the chapter for me was the part relating to bricks and mortar.  The bricks are the content specific words, while the mortar are the words which hold the bricks together. (Zwiers, p. 22)  This idea of bricks and mortar is something that I have never really though about.  This use of bricks and mortar and more specifically academic language in general, is extremely important in allowing complex ideas from a subject to be expressed verbally.  I believe that many of the ideas that I have gathered in this chapter, will be of great benefit when I begin my teaching.  These ideas such as bricks and mortar will hopefully allow me to better explain the subject material to my students.

The article “Supporting Secondary Reading Through Functional Language Analysis” brought to light the many challenges that high school students face when presented with academic materials.   It also mentioned that each discipline or subject uses different language structures in order to present the knowledge.  The importance of the teacher was stated within the article and that “a teacher’s close reading of even small portions of text with students, helped to maintain their engagement” (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010, p. 588).  It goes on to talk about functional language analysis, which helps students to recognize language patterns within each discipline. (p. 591)

In my own experience there were times during high school where I struggled during certain classes to fully understand the text.  The teachers were unable to properly explain the material to me or the other students or simply were unaware that it was necessary to explain it in more detail.  I too believe that it would be a difficult concept to introduce simply because I have never thought about it before; however, I definitely think that it has value.