by: Lisabette Osborn
The responses are due on Wednesday, Dec. 1st, at class time!
_____________________________________________
In the article American Indian Language Policy and School Success by John Rehyer, the Native American Language act is discussed. This act was passed on October 30 of 1990 and signed by President Bush. The act says, “The status of the cultures and languages of Native Americans is unique and the United States has the responsibility to act together with Native Americans to ensure the survival of these unique cultures and languages.” The acts purpose is to, “preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native American languages.” Today the Native American education system is troubled and test scores are far below the average. It has become a question on how to improve the educational system without repeating similar mistake of the past. Rehyer writes that The Native American languages have been pushed to the side and English has been forced upon these tribes.
Organizations such as, U.S. English and English First lobby are fighting for the constitutional amendment to make English the official language of the United States and of the educational system. There are sixteen states that have made English their official language. The author writes that making the official language of the United States English would cause major issues for Native American tribes that are attempting to “maintain their tribal language” and trying to, “restore languages that were suppressed in past years.”
Rehyer discusses the problems with the English only movement for the American Indian education system. Rehyer explains that, “The support for English-only instruction in this country is correlated with the rise and fall of the perceived threat to the "American way of life" by immigrants to this country and thus is a form of xenophobia.” The author discusses that back in the nineteenth century the figurative threat was thought to be from, “many Catholics from southern Europe and Ireland.” The result was emphasis on, “Americanization.” The teaching of the Indian children fell into the hands of government employees who were selected through their ability to pass a general English language Civil Service examination rather than for any special knowledge of Indian education. The teachers were not encouraged to learn anything about their student’s background and traditions. In many cases the Native American children saw their teachers as aliens because they had nothing in common with them. The author says that recently many have described the past European educational efforts to be similar.Rehyer writes that, “Non-Indian Americans need to respect Indian people’s rejection of the old assimilationist approach to Indian education that can be found in the recently passed educational policies of several tribes, including the Navajo the Northern Ute, and the Pasqua Yaqui.”
According to Rehyer the Navajo Tribal leader Peterson Zah declared in the tribal education policies that, “We believe that an excellent education can produce achievement in the basic academic skills and skills required by modern technology and still educate young Navajo citizens in their language, history, government and culture.” The Native American tribes are not denying the importance of learning English. In many cases the tribes agree that English can help better their futures and help their students become more successful in the world today. The Native American tribes are simply attempting to preserve their cultural heritage. According to Rehyer, “The National Association for Bilingual Education Western District Representative sees our native languages nurturing our spirits and hearts and the English language as sustenance for our bodies"
Rehyer says that no tribe had let their native language become more important than the teaching of English. The American Indians want to become bilingual instead of simply throwing out their tribal languages. The tribes believe that by doing this they will become more successful, but also maintain tradition. Rehyer writes that, “The Native American Languages Act of 1990 is the American Indian's answer to the English-only movement, and the Act's bilingual/multicultural educational approach is supported by the dismal historical record of assimilationist approaches to Indian education in the United States.” Rehyer discusses that the reform of education and the movements to make English the main form of language when teaching education often disregards the, “linguistic and cultural issues and propose reforms that probably will hurt rather than help Indian education. “
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Blog 27: The Klingon Language
By Samantha O'Donnell
In Glen Proechel’s article Klingon and Esperanto: The Odd Couple, the author depicts some similarities and mostly differences of the Klingon language as opposed to Esperanto. Klingon first entered the scene in the third Star Trek movie in 1984. Later in 1992 the Klingon Language Institute was formed, which included some 600 members all over the world. Unlike Esperanto, the Klingon language has gotten quite far in popularity among the science fiction enthusiasts and some others. The main difference between the two languages is the purpose for which they were created. According to the reading, Esperanto was created to improve and relate communication throughout European languages whereas Klingon was created for pure entertainment.
However, the author mentions some key distinguishing features of Klingon. First off the language is almost the exact opposite of English. The order of words is scrambled and contains no common sounds. It’s distinctive in that it has “endless puns” and “tongue-in-cheek” definitions. Most Klingon words are one syllable constructs or complete “non-sense”. To get a better idea of how backwards the language is, the Klingon word order is object-verb-subject.
On the other hand, Esperanto thrives on its complexities of vowel endings which map out the intentions of words and parts of speech. It is easily recognizable and though unintended contains homonyms which make it a lot more understandable as a spoken language compared to that of Klingon.
It may be closed minded to say, but it is hard to relate and understand a language that was made for motion picture and fun. Esperanto in my opinion had more of a purpose, though there are some very minor similarities the two languages do not appear to belong in the same category. One was made to bring persons together and the other to create a group of outsiders.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Blog 24: Humor in Grammar Teaching (The Strawman Meets his Match)
by: Amanda Wieland
The responses are due on Wednesday, Nov. 17th, by class time.
___________________________________________
Alleen Nilsen and Don Nilsen, authors of “The Straw Mane Meets His Match: Six Arugments for Studying Humor in English Classes, start their article off by saying just how little validity their six claims to teach humor in the classroom are. Yet, their claims for teaching humor within the classroom are extremely strong, from this readers standpoint. Overall, the two authors write about six different reasons why teachers should incorporate grammar into their everyday lessons.
The first argument is that kids already get enough humor outside of school. This reason, the authors feel, is why humor should be found inside school as well. By not bringing something found in our everyday lives into the classroom can in turn make feels see just how irrelevant and unconnected to life school really is. Nilsen also argues that “[i]t takes skill and practice, along with a broad, cultural background of knowledge, to understand a full range of humor.” They note that as is with most literature, some humor can be more subtle than others, which is what this skill and practice gets students to recognize.
Another argument which is tackled in this article is the feeling that teaching humor will take away from the time teachers need to teach grammar, composition, literature, and public speaking. For the case of grammar, the authors note that students often respond better to lighthearted, humorous sentences within their problems. Taking on the argument of writing and speaking next, the authors feel that giving students items such as urban legends, or humorous monologues to write down can be better for students. They also feel that by analyzing humor itself can be a good way of incorporating more literature analysis. They feel that students are “genuinely interesting in figuring out what causes them to laugh;” therefore, have them look into humor. Nielsen presents ten different features with what people more often than not, find funny: surprise or shock, superiority, hostility, a trick or a twist, incongruity and irony, sudden insight, exaggeration, succinct word play, ambiguity, and situation.
The third argument is that teachers are supposed to be preparing kids to earn a living, not make them laugh. Yet, the authors feel that comedy is a very impressive way for students to earn a living. They also feel that comedy is a skill or trait which will carry over into other areas of student’s lives. They find it hard to name a career where humor would not be a positive attribute to the work environment. As a last resource for humor helping out in the job environment, they feel that humor helps in creative ways to solve problems. After all, humor in itself requires extreme creativity.
The fourth argument for leaving humor at the door is if teachers bring humor into the classroom, there will be censorship problems to handle. In a rather blunt manner, the authors simply agree with this statement. Yet, they also feel that humor can also be a way to help improve censorship. This can happen through the teaching of what is, or is not appropriate for the classroom setting.
Following censorship is the argument that humor often times hurts other’s feelings. Again, the authors agree with this statement. Then, they give the example that even though people get hurt by cars, hammers, or sticks society does not simply band them from existence. Similarly to censorship, the authors feel that humor can be used as a tool for either building or tearing. The authors feel that helping students achieve the balance of smiles, rather than painful stabs at the person is a balance that the teacher needs to help establish. They give the example of those who tell jokes about their own culture and why it is acceptable, rather than an outsider of a culture making fun of said culture. They feel that people say these jokes about themselves, because they have the right to challenge and criticize their own culture. On the other hand, when outsiders challenge or criticize and unknown culture merely adds to stereotypes.
The last argument which is challenged is that teachers can’t teach about humor if they can’t tell a joke or write a funny letter home. The authors then give several types of classroom activities that can be utilized to help teach about humor; writing parodies and pattern jokes, collecting funny news clippings, collecting humorous icons, and researching and writing about humor.
Personally, I feel that this article can be very helpful to the beginning teacher; yet, authors also warn against incorporating humor too fast, and to be open to questions from parents, co-workers, students, and administration about your humor antics.
The responses are due on Wednesday, Nov. 17th, by class time.
___________________________________________
Alleen Nilsen and Don Nilsen, authors of “The Straw Mane Meets His Match: Six Arugments for Studying Humor in English Classes, start their article off by saying just how little validity their six claims to teach humor in the classroom are. Yet, their claims for teaching humor within the classroom are extremely strong, from this readers standpoint. Overall, the two authors write about six different reasons why teachers should incorporate grammar into their everyday lessons.
The first argument is that kids already get enough humor outside of school. This reason, the authors feel, is why humor should be found inside school as well. By not bringing something found in our everyday lives into the classroom can in turn make feels see just how irrelevant and unconnected to life school really is. Nilsen also argues that “[i]t takes skill and practice, along with a broad, cultural background of knowledge, to understand a full range of humor.” They note that as is with most literature, some humor can be more subtle than others, which is what this skill and practice gets students to recognize.
Another argument which is tackled in this article is the feeling that teaching humor will take away from the time teachers need to teach grammar, composition, literature, and public speaking. For the case of grammar, the authors note that students often respond better to lighthearted, humorous sentences within their problems. Taking on the argument of writing and speaking next, the authors feel that giving students items such as urban legends, or humorous monologues to write down can be better for students. They also feel that by analyzing humor itself can be a good way of incorporating more literature analysis. They feel that students are “genuinely interesting in figuring out what causes them to laugh;” therefore, have them look into humor. Nielsen presents ten different features with what people more often than not, find funny: surprise or shock, superiority, hostility, a trick or a twist, incongruity and irony, sudden insight, exaggeration, succinct word play, ambiguity, and situation.
The third argument is that teachers are supposed to be preparing kids to earn a living, not make them laugh. Yet, the authors feel that comedy is a very impressive way for students to earn a living. They also feel that comedy is a skill or trait which will carry over into other areas of student’s lives. They find it hard to name a career where humor would not be a positive attribute to the work environment. As a last resource for humor helping out in the job environment, they feel that humor helps in creative ways to solve problems. After all, humor in itself requires extreme creativity.
The fourth argument for leaving humor at the door is if teachers bring humor into the classroom, there will be censorship problems to handle. In a rather blunt manner, the authors simply agree with this statement. Yet, they also feel that humor can also be a way to help improve censorship. This can happen through the teaching of what is, or is not appropriate for the classroom setting.
Following censorship is the argument that humor often times hurts other’s feelings. Again, the authors agree with this statement. Then, they give the example that even though people get hurt by cars, hammers, or sticks society does not simply band them from existence. Similarly to censorship, the authors feel that humor can be used as a tool for either building or tearing. The authors feel that helping students achieve the balance of smiles, rather than painful stabs at the person is a balance that the teacher needs to help establish. They give the example of those who tell jokes about their own culture and why it is acceptable, rather than an outsider of a culture making fun of said culture. They feel that people say these jokes about themselves, because they have the right to challenge and criticize their own culture. On the other hand, when outsiders challenge or criticize and unknown culture merely adds to stereotypes.
The last argument which is challenged is that teachers can’t teach about humor if they can’t tell a joke or write a funny letter home. The authors then give several types of classroom activities that can be utilized to help teach about humor; writing parodies and pattern jokes, collecting funny news clippings, collecting humorous icons, and researching and writing about humor.
Personally, I feel that this article can be very helpful to the beginning teacher; yet, authors also warn against incorporating humor too fast, and to be open to questions from parents, co-workers, students, and administration about your humor antics.
Friday, November 12, 2010
To Grammar or Not to Grammar: That Is Not the Question!
This article discusses the topic of teaching traditional grammar or incorporating grammar into writing. It talks about what teaching methods are most effective and successfully get students to incorporate proper grammar in his or her writing. "If teachers teach something well, students will learn it and, what's more, will apply it well." This learning theory may be true in some cases but in others students may need guidance in developing certain concepts whether they are taught well or not. The authors found that just teaching grammar by sentence analysis, the grammar is not transferred to student writing.
One author found that teaching sentence-imitating and sentence-generating activities resulted in pieces of writing. If she had just been teaching traditional grammar she would not have had the same results. Through her feedback she found how grammar and detail can emerge through good preparation for writing. One of the author's students who also became a teacher had her students write before and after poems. With the first poem she instructed the students to use a lot of adverbs and adjectives. With the second poem she used a prewriting experience to get the student's thoughts flowing. The teacher could see a huge difference between the two poems. The prewriting experience seemed to enhance the students writing.
Connie Weaver decided to try a little experiment with her students. She found that grammatical structures in current literature her students were reading could be used for teaching stylistic writing options that students could incorporate into their own writings. Weaver took a paragraph from the novel The Giver and changed it to look more like something her students would write. When she asked the students to discuss what they thought of this altered rendition they thought it was too choppy and questioned whether it was really from the novel because it did not match the writing styles of The Giver. Weaver explained to them what she had done to the excerpt and allowed them to make their own changes for a revision. "The goal is to see students incorporating these grammatical constructions into all of their writing and, consciously or unconsciously, to become more sophisticated writers." Instead of just learning grammar, the students were engaged in improving their writer which had a more positive outcome.
The main point of the article was to show how well engaging and guiding students in their writing is a more effective way to teach than just teaching traditional grammar lessons. Teachers need to take the time to analyze what make the students' writing effective. The research in the article clearly shows that students do not transfer plain grammar lessons into vivid, imaginative writing. The authors decided that it is not a question of to grammar or not to grammar but instead it is a question of why, when, and where specific aspects of grammar need to be taught in order to strengthen students' writing.
In my opinion, I think that incorporating the teaching methods mentioned in the article is a great way of teaching grammar to students. I think that traditional grammar lessons are important as a foundation for good writing but the teaching methods introduced in the article would be much more beneficial to students. As a future teacher I would like to integrate these methods into my teaching and hopefully it will have the same results as the described in the article.
One author found that teaching sentence-imitating and sentence-generating activities resulted in pieces of writing. If she had just been teaching traditional grammar she would not have had the same results. Through her feedback she found how grammar and detail can emerge through good preparation for writing. One of the author's students who also became a teacher had her students write before and after poems. With the first poem she instructed the students to use a lot of adverbs and adjectives. With the second poem she used a prewriting experience to get the student's thoughts flowing. The teacher could see a huge difference between the two poems. The prewriting experience seemed to enhance the students writing.
Connie Weaver decided to try a little experiment with her students. She found that grammatical structures in current literature her students were reading could be used for teaching stylistic writing options that students could incorporate into their own writings. Weaver took a paragraph from the novel The Giver and changed it to look more like something her students would write. When she asked the students to discuss what they thought of this altered rendition they thought it was too choppy and questioned whether it was really from the novel because it did not match the writing styles of The Giver. Weaver explained to them what she had done to the excerpt and allowed them to make their own changes for a revision. "The goal is to see students incorporating these grammatical constructions into all of their writing and, consciously or unconsciously, to become more sophisticated writers." Instead of just learning grammar, the students were engaged in improving their writer which had a more positive outcome.
The main point of the article was to show how well engaging and guiding students in their writing is a more effective way to teach than just teaching traditional grammar lessons. Teachers need to take the time to analyze what make the students' writing effective. The research in the article clearly shows that students do not transfer plain grammar lessons into vivid, imaginative writing. The authors decided that it is not a question of to grammar or not to grammar but instead it is a question of why, when, and where specific aspects of grammar need to be taught in order to strengthen students' writing.
In my opinion, I think that incorporating the teaching methods mentioned in the article is a great way of teaching grammar to students. I think that traditional grammar lessons are important as a foundation for good writing but the teaching methods introduced in the article would be much more beneficial to students. As a future teacher I would like to integrate these methods into my teaching and hopefully it will have the same results as the described in the article.
Blog 21: How to Calculate Your Own Readability
The article titled, "Readability versus leveling," explains the similarities and differences between readability and leveling. As defined in the article, the term "readability" is an objective numerical score obtained by applying a readability formula (Fry 2002). Leveling yields a score of difficulty, but it is less objective and takes into account some subjective factors of judgment. Both are used to determine the difficulty of books and reading materials for elementary and/or commercial reading material.
Syntactic difficulty and semantic difficulty are taken into account when determining readability scores. Syntactic difficulty or the grammatical complexity is usually measured by sentence length. Semantic difficulty or the meaning of a word is judged by the length of a word, the number of syllables, and sometimes by the frequency of a word. as compared to leveling, which is determined by the content of the text, illustrations, length, curriculum, language structure, judgment, and format. Since more measures are taken into consideration for leveling, it is not used outside of elementary school classrooms, but readability can be used inside and outside of classrooms. The objectivity of readability, as opposed to the subjectivity of leveling, allows it to be used commonly in such material as military training manuals, plain-language laws for insurance policies or loan contracts, and newspaper articles. This is so because the objectivity and consistency it posses allows different people to have the same score on whatever book or reading material they are calculating.
The directions are: Randomly select 3 one hundred word passages from a book or an article. Plot average number of syllables and average number of sentences per 100 words on a graph to determine the grade level of the material. Choose more passages per book if great variability is observed and conclude that the book has uneven readability. Few books will fall in a gray area but when they do, then grade level scores are invalid (Fry 2002).
To be serious, when I first read the title, I thought this article was going to explain how to calculate my reading level. So I was very confused but then figured out if I can calculate the level of readability of books i normally read and can comprehend, that should tell me at what reading level I am up to.
Syntactic difficulty and semantic difficulty are taken into account when determining readability scores. Syntactic difficulty or the grammatical complexity is usually measured by sentence length. Semantic difficulty or the meaning of a word is judged by the length of a word, the number of syllables, and sometimes by the frequency of a word. as compared to leveling, which is determined by the content of the text, illustrations, length, curriculum, language structure, judgment, and format. Since more measures are taken into consideration for leveling, it is not used outside of elementary school classrooms, but readability can be used inside and outside of classrooms. The objectivity of readability, as opposed to the subjectivity of leveling, allows it to be used commonly in such material as military training manuals, plain-language laws for insurance policies or loan contracts, and newspaper articles. This is so because the objectivity and consistency it posses allows different people to have the same score on whatever book or reading material they are calculating.
The directions are: Randomly select 3 one hundred word passages from a book or an article. Plot average number of syllables and average number of sentences per 100 words on a graph to determine the grade level of the material. Choose more passages per book if great variability is observed and conclude that the book has uneven readability. Few books will fall in a gray area but when they do, then grade level scores are invalid (Fry 2002).
To be serious, when I first read the title, I thought this article was going to explain how to calculate my reading level. So I was very confused but then figured out if I can calculate the level of readability of books i normally read and can comprehend, that should tell me at what reading level I am up to.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Blog 17, Case Study of Teachers' Beliefs
by: Alex Pass
Answers are due on Friday, Nov. 12th, at the start of class.
____________________________________________________
In the article “Conceptions of Grammar Teaching : A case study of Teachers’ Beliefs and Classroom Practices” author Thomas S.C. Farrell sets up and experiment between to English teachers teaching grammar to students in Singapore to find out different factors that play apart in the teacher’s practices. In the introduction, Thomas Farrell explains that “what teachers do in the classroom is said to be governed by what they believe and these beliefs often serve to act as a filter through which instructional judgments and decisions are made.” Anything that has happen in teacher past big or small has an impact on how her kids will learn from her teaching methods. Thomas decides to conduct an experiment to see what kind of beliefs the teachers have will impact on the teaching of English grammar on students in Singapore.
Thomas Farrell next point in his research paper is Teacher Beliefs. He starts out by stating “working within the field of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages), has suggested that teacher beliefs are neither easy to define nor study because they are not directly observable. You can’t study someone’s beliefs because you would have to observe a person their entire life just to find out how they came to the conclusions on some of their beliefs. Also he or she could have had different beliefs imprinted into their DNA too. What you can do is learn from their beliefs and watch them use their different beliefs and knowledge’s used in the ways they teach students.
Thomas sets up two questions and asks “What are the two teachers' beliefs about the way grammar should be taught in primary school? What are their actual classroom practices of teaching grammar? He also stated that he will also observe any other factors he feels that will also have an effect on his research. When the results came back from his table “teachers’ belief statements”, found out they both agree that grammar is very important for students to maintain correct grammar structure in their writing works. His next table his next questions focused on “teachers’ classroom practices when teaching grammar”. Thomas states that they “adopted somewhat of a traditional approach to grammar teaching. The observed lessons were mainly teacher-centred, with both teachers providing explanations and instructions, and asking questions and eliciting responses from the students on their knowledge of grammar items”. They both felt that the way to teach grammar is to explain and have interaction with the students to make sure they feel like they understand what is being taught by their teachers.
The results of this experiment Thomas says “The findings suggest that teachers do indeed have a set of complex belief systems that are sometimes not reflected in their classroom practices for various complicated reasons, some directly related to context of teaching”. My opinion on how he came to this conclusion on his experiment is that not all their beliefs will have an impact on their teaching but their past on how they were taught will have impact on the way they will teach. To find out if their beliefs have an impact on how a teacher teaches you would have to study them from the day they were born till they stop teaching because this one way you would see the impact of their beliefs has on teaching.
Answers are due on Friday, Nov. 12th, at the start of class.
____________________________________________________
In the article “Conceptions of Grammar Teaching : A case study of Teachers’ Beliefs and Classroom Practices” author Thomas S.C. Farrell sets up and experiment between to English teachers teaching grammar to students in Singapore to find out different factors that play apart in the teacher’s practices. In the introduction, Thomas Farrell explains that “what teachers do in the classroom is said to be governed by what they believe and these beliefs often serve to act as a filter through which instructional judgments and decisions are made.” Anything that has happen in teacher past big or small has an impact on how her kids will learn from her teaching methods. Thomas decides to conduct an experiment to see what kind of beliefs the teachers have will impact on the teaching of English grammar on students in Singapore.
Thomas Farrell next point in his research paper is Teacher Beliefs. He starts out by stating “working within the field of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages), has suggested that teacher beliefs are neither easy to define nor study because they are not directly observable. You can’t study someone’s beliefs because you would have to observe a person their entire life just to find out how they came to the conclusions on some of their beliefs. Also he or she could have had different beliefs imprinted into their DNA too. What you can do is learn from their beliefs and watch them use their different beliefs and knowledge’s used in the ways they teach students.
Thomas sets up two questions and asks “What are the two teachers' beliefs about the way grammar should be taught in primary school? What are their actual classroom practices of teaching grammar? He also stated that he will also observe any other factors he feels that will also have an effect on his research. When the results came back from his table “teachers’ belief statements”, found out they both agree that grammar is very important for students to maintain correct grammar structure in their writing works. His next table his next questions focused on “teachers’ classroom practices when teaching grammar”. Thomas states that they “adopted somewhat of a traditional approach to grammar teaching. The observed lessons were mainly teacher-centred, with both teachers providing explanations and instructions, and asking questions and eliciting responses from the students on their knowledge of grammar items”. They both felt that the way to teach grammar is to explain and have interaction with the students to make sure they feel like they understand what is being taught by their teachers.
The results of this experiment Thomas says “The findings suggest that teachers do indeed have a set of complex belief systems that are sometimes not reflected in their classroom practices for various complicated reasons, some directly related to context of teaching”. My opinion on how he came to this conclusion on his experiment is that not all their beliefs will have an impact on their teaching but their past on how they were taught will have impact on the way they will teach. To find out if their beliefs have an impact on how a teacher teaches you would have to study them from the day they were born till they stop teaching because this one way you would see the impact of their beliefs has on teaching.
Blog 20: The Language of the Piraha by Rafael Velasco
In the article "Living without Numbers" or Time by Rafaela von Bredow, it discusses how The Piraha people really do not have any form of written language, history, words or subordinate clauses. In the first part the author goes into how Daniel Everett, a linguist, went to Brazil to study the Piraha. Who at first was not accepted and whom they tried to kill, but since he was able to understand enough of their language from eavesdropping on them he was able to escape an attack, but since he was intrigued by the language he had to go back and learn more. So he went back and spent a total of 7 years with the Piraha and since he was not sure about what he had learned that it took him nearly 30 years until he published his findings. Which were very controversial. Since it lead to the debate about how homo sapiens managed to develop vocal communication.
Since the Piraha do not have the same language skills as others do. They do not use any words associated with time, conjugations, or colors. In addition they do not use subordinate clauses like other languages do. such as von Bredow's example, " When I am finished eating, I would like to speak with you." the Piragas say, "I finish eating, I speak with you." They also have no number system or uses of numbers. And when a psycho-linguist, Peter Gordon came to visit the Piraha he tried to see if he could figure out if they had the ability to determine exact numbers. Which they did not but it still amazed people as to how they communicated. Years before this study Everett tried to teach them but had no luck doing so.
Yet later on Everett came up with and explanation for the Piraha idiom and said that the language was created by the culture, and said that the core of their culture is "live here and now" Which goes into the fact that the Piraha do not have myths or history or any real thoughts on how their lives came to be and when Everett asked them that they simply responded, "Everything is the same,things always are." Which shows that the Priaha are not really curious about their lives that they just want to live it.
Which led the scientists to debate whether Piraha are capable of recursion and according to Everett the only reason it is not part of their culture is that it is forbidden. The only issue with this is that since no one else can understand the Piraha as well as Everett no one can confirm his observations.
Since the Piraha do not have the same language skills as others do. They do not use any words associated with time, conjugations, or colors. In addition they do not use subordinate clauses like other languages do. such as von Bredow's example, " When I am finished eating, I would like to speak with you." the Piragas say, "I finish eating, I speak with you." They also have no number system or uses of numbers. And when a psycho-linguist, Peter Gordon came to visit the Piraha he tried to see if he could figure out if they had the ability to determine exact numbers. Which they did not but it still amazed people as to how they communicated. Years before this study Everett tried to teach them but had no luck doing so.
Yet later on Everett came up with and explanation for the Piraha idiom and said that the language was created by the culture, and said that the core of their culture is "live here and now" Which goes into the fact that the Piraha do not have myths or history or any real thoughts on how their lives came to be and when Everett asked them that they simply responded, "Everything is the same,things always are." Which shows that the Priaha are not really curious about their lives that they just want to live it.
Which led the scientists to debate whether Piraha are capable of recursion and according to Everett the only reason it is not part of their culture is that it is forbidden. The only issue with this is that since no one else can understand the Piraha as well as Everett no one can confirm his observations.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Blog 16: Dialect Boundaries
by: Sarah Cummings
Responses are due by Friday, Nov. 12th, at class time.
____________________________________________
This article was a study of different dialects in the Middle East part of the United States. This particular study focuses more on the different dialects of Ohio. 12 locals that never lived outside of their hometown were taken from 4 different cities in Ohio and asked to circle and label areas where the people speak differently from them. They have to label from 1-4 their differences in dialect. 1 being where they speak like them and 4 being where they sound completely different.
The respondents were recorded and asked to follow up questions for clarification. The two respondents from Southern Ohio didn't agree on the dialect areas. One said there was no difference in dialect with people from Ohio, they all sound the same. The other divided Ohio in two parts. The upper and western area of Ohio was unlabelled while the southern region by Kentucky and West Virginia was labelled "hillbilly slang". He/ she said that the northern and western part of Ohio was similar to the lower Michigan, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.
Southern Ohio was similar to Kentucky and West Virginia, but West Virginia was more "twangy". I-70 (runes east and west) was used as the main divider between upper and lower Ohio. The 3 participants from southeast/central Ohio seemed to agree that the speech within Ohio is largely the same, with few pockets of difference attributed to cultural or ethnic background of residence.
The 3 respond ants from central Ohio (Columbus) tended to outline and comment more on dialect areas than that of the respiondants from the southern part of the state. Northern Ohio was circled with Southern Michigan and Indiana. northeast Ohio was given it's own dialect and said they have their own way of speaking, ("like the New Yorker's) with several dialects with varying degrees of differentiation. Northwestern respondents percieved at least 4 different dialect regions that extend beyond state boarders- central and nothwestern Ohio constitute one dialect region that extends towards the west into Indiana, northeast Ohio and southern and eastern Michigan is another area. A third area is found in southeastern to central Ohio and extends into Pennsylvania. Region 4 is found in southern Ohio and extends across the Ohio river into Kentucky and West Virginia.
Responses are due by Friday, Nov. 12th, at class time.
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This article was a study of different dialects in the Middle East part of the United States. This particular study focuses more on the different dialects of Ohio. 12 locals that never lived outside of their hometown were taken from 4 different cities in Ohio and asked to circle and label areas where the people speak differently from them. They have to label from 1-4 their differences in dialect. 1 being where they speak like them and 4 being where they sound completely different.
The respondents were recorded and asked to follow up questions for clarification. The two respondents from Southern Ohio didn't agree on the dialect areas. One said there was no difference in dialect with people from Ohio, they all sound the same. The other divided Ohio in two parts. The upper and western area of Ohio was unlabelled while the southern region by Kentucky and West Virginia was labelled "hillbilly slang". He/ she said that the northern and western part of Ohio was similar to the lower Michigan, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.
Southern Ohio was similar to Kentucky and West Virginia, but West Virginia was more "twangy". I-70 (runes east and west) was used as the main divider between upper and lower Ohio. The 3 participants from southeast/central Ohio seemed to agree that the speech within Ohio is largely the same, with few pockets of difference attributed to cultural or ethnic background of residence.
The 3 respond ants from central Ohio (Columbus) tended to outline and comment more on dialect areas than that of the respiondants from the southern part of the state. Northern Ohio was circled with Southern Michigan and Indiana. northeast Ohio was given it's own dialect and said they have their own way of speaking, ("like the New Yorker's) with several dialects with varying degrees of differentiation. Northwestern respondents percieved at least 4 different dialect regions that extend beyond state boarders- central and nothwestern Ohio constitute one dialect region that extends towards the west into Indiana, northeast Ohio and southern and eastern Michigan is another area. A third area is found in southeastern to central Ohio and extends into Pennsylvania. Region 4 is found in southern Ohio and extends across the Ohio river into Kentucky and West Virginia.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Blog 19: Grammar Instruction: What Teachers Say
by: John Gund
Responses are due by Wednesday, Nov. 10th, at class time (because it was published late by instructor).
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In the article “Grammar Instruction: What Teachers Say” author Brenda Arnett Petruzzella illustrates differing opinions on how grammar should (if at all) be taught especially in regards to the difference between college and high school. The first section of the article is about differing attitudes towards teaching grammar. Petruzzella begins by writing about her years of experience in being taught grammar, only to realize in college the idea that it might not be worth it. According to Petruzzella, there is debatable agreement that grammar doesn’t actually improve writing skills. That being said, the author claims that many teachers dislike teaching grammar as much as students hate learning it. As a teacher, Petruzzella tried multiple methods in teaching grammar that would be beneficial to her students, and individual discussion about their papers appeared to be the most effective. However, this method was found very time consuming and no critical consensus of scholars seemed to agree on the “best” method of teaching grammar. One problem that Petruzzella encountered was that teachers who had no systematic grammar instruction were in educational settings that required them to teach formal grammar.
The second section contains the debate between the findings of researchers vs. classroom teachers in how grammar should be taught. Petruzzella personally asked many teachers that she knew about their opinions on teaching grammar. She found that the majority of them agreed that there was a need for some grammar instruction, but she also concluded that one of the major problems of teaching grammar is that there is little consensus as to what the definition of grammar is. In this section Petruzzella then transitions to the opinions of six teachers to illustrate various opinions in teaching grammar.
The third section begins with a teacher who teaches grammar in the terms of writing skills. Another teacher felt similarly, and argues that you can’t teach writing without grammar, and believes firmly in personal conferences for every assignment. Another teacher felt that grammar should not be taught in drills, but rather in applicational practice. The fourth teacher’s opinion prefers teaching grammar within the context of personal assignments. The fifth teacher felt that the major controversy about teaching grammar was about how much to teach. The final teacher’s opinion given believes that a certain level of grammar education is needed for effective writing is needed.
The fourth section discusses the aforementioned teacher’s opinions on teaching grammar. Petruzzella finds that no matter what you consider grammar skills to be, a certain level of grammar knowledge is essential to good writing. However, perhaps teaching grammar should come after teaching writing rather than drills. It would appear that the best way to teach grammar is within the context of individual students’ writing. Petruzzella’s conclusion argued that teaching grammar through the context of writing is the most effective method. There are different methods to this concept, but the basic idea remains the same.
Personally, I agree that it is very effective to teach grammar within the context of personal papers. That being said it requires a lot of time and effort to succeed in that method. I still believe that grammar drills can still serve a useful purpose, but they should be taught with more context in mind than just mindless memorization. For a teacher it can be hard to give constructive and individual instruction to large classes. On the whole I felt that this was a very excellent article and did a good job of presenting some different opinions on such a vast topic.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Grammar Really is Important!
Deborah Dean really hit on something very important with this article. I believe teaching what the state says has to be taught, or what the curriculum says has to be taught gets in the way of actually teaching students. There are some activities that need to be taught even though they are boring, but I believe it is the teacher's job to make the topic interesting. Children will not learn if the subject is not taught in either an interesting way or a way that appeals to the students. I liked how she took constructive criticism from the parents of the students. The parents were upset because they felt like Mrs. Dean was spending too much time on teaching pointless grammar exercises. She took this criticism and actually turned her ways of teaching around. It is so refreshing to hear of a teacher who will not just stick with the same boring routine even if she knows it is not sinking into the student's heads.
When she started applying grammar in a different way; the students actually picked up on the information and began to learn. Even though they did not fully understand the fact that they were learning sentence structuring and grammar; it did not matter because they were getting the concepts. Students are not dumb. They were younger in this particular instance, and they needed a refreshing approach to learn how to become better writers. By Mrs. Dean stepping out of her comfort zone and finding a new way to teach grammar; these students eventually became better writers.
A hands on learning technique is the best way to retain the information that you have learned. Mrs. Dean realized that and ha d her students making up sentences as the lessons went along. this tactic was a great way for these students to become better writes, which is exactly what ended up happening.
What I learned from this article is that grammar is very important. It is the fundamental skill to possess to be a great writer. I think it is sometimes taught in a boring way, and it can come off as pointless to students. I believe if teachers would take an approach like Mrs. Dean; more students would learn grammar without even knowing and eventually become better writers.
When she started applying grammar in a different way; the students actually picked up on the information and began to learn. Even though they did not fully understand the fact that they were learning sentence structuring and grammar; it did not matter because they were getting the concepts. Students are not dumb. They were younger in this particular instance, and they needed a refreshing approach to learn how to become better writers. By Mrs. Dean stepping out of her comfort zone and finding a new way to teach grammar; these students eventually became better writers.
A hands on learning technique is the best way to retain the information that you have learned. Mrs. Dean realized that and ha d her students making up sentences as the lessons went along. this tactic was a great way for these students to become better writes, which is exactly what ended up happening.
What I learned from this article is that grammar is very important. It is the fundamental skill to possess to be a great writer. I think it is sometimes taught in a boring way, and it can come off as pointless to students. I believe if teachers would take an approach like Mrs. Dean; more students would learn grammar without even knowing and eventually become better writers.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Decline and Fall of Esperanto: Lessons for Standards Committees by Robert Patterson and Stanley M. Huff
Ludovic Zamenhof was born in 1859 in Poland. In 1887 he introduced Esperanto to the world. Esperanto is a simple language he created to bring the world together. Esperanto has a Romantic influence and resembles many Slavic languages. Zamenhof decided to assemble his own language instead of bringing back an old language like Latin or classic Greek because those languages are too complex to learn easily.
Zamenhof was trying to solve many social problems with the creation of Esperanto. He figured Esperanto would make international communication easier and could possibly bring peace to Europe. One of the benefits of Esperanto is that it is not culturally biased.
When it first came out, Esperanto received mixed reviews. Some liked it and some didn’t. In the 20th century the West, including Western Europe and America, stilled showed no interest in Esperanto. Even though these places had many different types of people living there that spoke many different languages. Eastern Europe and China though saw the benefits of using a common language. By the 1970s anywhere between two and five million people studied or spoke Esperanto. There was even the possibility that Esperanto would become the official language of the European Union. Unfortunately Zamenhof did not get to see the rise in popularity that Esperanto got because he died in 1917.
Instead of Esperanto being the language of the world, English is. Even though English has idiosyncrasies, nonphonetic spelling, and consists of cultural biases it is still more popular than Esperanto, which has none of these negatives. English is more practical than Esperanto because it is a “mother tongue” language. English is also well known because it is the language of science, research, finance, investments, music, and movies. Approximately one billion people either speak English or in the process of learning English. Even 80% of web sites are in English. One of the inconveniences of Esperanto is that not many people speak it.
The goal of Esperanto is similar to the goal of standards committees. In order for there to be human communication a common language is necessary. A common language is especially important in the medical field for instance. The American Society for Testing and Materials was the first medical data standards committee established. It was started in 1970 and its purpose was to define standards related to medical information. Since then many committees have been created for the purpose of creating and maintaining standards and identifying communication problems in the medical field.
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