EJ in Focus Shifting Perspectives and Reflective Piece

In this blog, I worked with grammar concepts that I have not used much or struggles with incorporating in my writing. 

The article EJ in Focus Shifting Perspectives by Jill Ewing Flynn is about a classroom unit she observed. She watched Mr. Ramsey teach "The Language of Power" unit. Students made a list of all the dialects that they could think of: military, texting, home, etc [use of a colon for a list]. They would then practice writing in different types of dialects and came up with rules for each one (such a fun activity I would love to try in my class someday) [a side note in parentheses]. This would be a valuable way for students to learn code switching and learn to appreciate different dialects. I really loved the Like/Uh/Um Battle concept and I think students would have a lot of fun attempting to do that activity in particular. The conclusion of this article is that when it comes to teaching language and grammar, a teacher should not only rely on workbook exercises [complex sentence—starts with a dependent clause, comma, and then ends with an independent clause].

For my portfolio, I choose to create a scrapbook because it will be more intriguing to look at. I wanted to create something that I could have for my students in my future classroom. When looking at two pages, one side will have the rules of a concept and then the other side will have examples of that concept. When teaching grammar, it is important to stay away from only using worksheets. By only having students complete grammar worksheets, they do not learn anything—it becomes more about completing the sheet and getting credit rather than learning the concept. In my future classroom, I want to do lots of activities to teach grammar that do not involve any worksheets. I also want to incorporate all types of home languages that my students bring with them. It is important to me that my students learn that Standard English is not correct way to speak. There are many different types of language styles and dialects.

A very powerful activity that we did in class was the tea party activity. This really got students to realize the horrible things that have and do happen to those who do not speak in Standard English. This activity will help students grasp the idea that all languages and dialects should be accepted. The important thing for students to understand is that Standard English and all other languages are situational—when to use them depends on who you are talking to, why you are talking to them, and the setting. I also like the activity of having students make a big list of every dialect that they can think of and then having them write a one-page paper practicing using that dialect. This will help students learn and appreciate language variety. Also to practice oral skills of these dialects, a great activity is the Like/Uh/Um Battle. This activity would most likely appeal to a lot of students in a fun way. To wrap up the unit of teaching language variety and power, I would have students do a research paper and exploring in depth the struggles that people have faced when it comes to just simply talking different. My hopes is that by the end of my future class, my students will learn to feel comfortable talking in their home speak, Standard English, and appreciate anything different.

Beginning of a Draft for the Languages of Power & Resistance Project

People are often discriminated against because of their language and how they speak.  A common location of discrimination is in classrooms of all grades. On the east coast of the United States, a very common form on English that is spoken is Ebonics. Ebonics is widely associated with how African Americans speak English. English teachers often teach students to not speak in Ebonics because it is not Standard English. However, no language is superior or proper, it just depends on the context, people, and place of a situation. Teachers should be empowering their students and helping them learn that there are different ways of speaking, but none are wrong or superior to the other. Ebonics is just as valid of a type of speech than Standard English and they both should be viewed in the classroom as correct.

Ebonics is mainly associated with African Americans, but all races can and do speak it. Ebonics and all type of language is more of a cultural adaption than learning right from wrong. I grew up in Philadelphia, which is highly populated with African Americans and Caucasians. Due to the culture that surrounded us, all of the people I went to grade school with and myself all spoke in Ebonics in our home speak. However, we were discouraged from doing it in the classroom. Teachers would often tell us to speak English, disregarding the fact that Ebonics is a form of English.

When I moved to Washington on the west coast, the culture was very different and there was a significant decrease in the amount of African Americans. Nobody at my school spoke Ebonics to each other like I was used to. When I would make conversations with my peers, I would get very funny looks. John Rickford writes, “…many other people, black and white, regard it as a sign of limited education or sophistication, as a legacy of slavery or an impediment to socioeconomic mobility.” I could tell that people would make fun of me because of how I talked and it was very hard for me to transition into this new culture. Speaking normally for me, people would look at me like I was dumb [starting the sentence with a participle]. I had to prove to my peers that I was just as smart as them, if not more just because I spoke in what sounded “ghetto” to them. Tons of students move around and face these problems of not being accepted and being judged due to speaking differently or in a different language.

Rickford, John. "Linguistic Society of America." What Is Ebonics (African American English)? Web. 7 Mar. 2015. <http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/what-ebonics-african-american-english>.

Christensen's Article

         Christensen's article is very powerful by getting the reader to realize and understand how much languages other than English are frowned upon in society. This problem has been going on ever since colonization and still continues to be a large problem today. The results of colonization caused linguistic genocide and these impacts are still affected in families. Christensen writes, "Parents are frequently forced to choose between teaching their children in their home language or pushing them to study the language of the dominant social groups." Parents should be celebrating the fact that they can teach their children more than one language. The concept of doing the tea party is a great and impactful idea. When I read about it in the article, I thought it was weird and wouldn't really be a great activity, which was not the case when I tried it out for myself. I believe this is an activity that would be beneficial to students [complex sentence with a relative clause that begins with a relative pronoun]. When I started meeting other people in the tea party, I was shocked at how awful people were treated for speaking their native language. One that stood out to me was where the person had to wear a necklace with a cow skull on it if they were caught speaking in their original language. I just could not imagine being shamed for speaking in my own language. The tea party made me realize how big of a problem this is in the world. I will definitely be doing this tea party activity in my classroom when I become a teacher.  As a teacher, I want to welcome all different languages and I want my students to embrace that they can speak them. I think that English Language Learners will feel very pressured into speaking English and suppressing their other language. As a teacher I want them to encourage them to speak both because I do not want them to feel like one language is better than the other. I am not completely sure about what I want to do my languages of power and resistance research project on yet. I want to get more information about it before I decide. However, I think it will be on the topic of African American English and how that is recognized as improper English and wrong. I will probably look at how teachers in the classroom try to stop people from using this language (both spoken and written) and teach them that it is wrong since it differs from Standard English. A large percentage of our population, especially from where I am from in Philadelphia, speaks African American English, so I think it would be fun for me to research more about it. I think it will be especially really interesting to look at it from this perspective, since I never had before.

I practiced using complex sentence with a relative clause that begins with a relative pronoun because I think this is something that I will use a lot in my future writing. 

Sudden Possibilities and DOL

I choose to work with all three patterns this week because I think they all happen naturally in my writing. I wanted to work on perfecting my skills with these patterns.

When reading about how DOL's are not really helpful and more of a waist of time because they are generic and have no context, I was kind of shocked. I was shocked because I remember doing these types of things in middle school and thought it was helpful; however, now looking back I think that they were completely pointless (use of a conjunctive adverb). They really did not help my personal writing in any way because I never actually applied what I learned outside of the DOL devoted time.  So pointless (rhetorical fragment beginning with a coordinating conjunction for emphasis). 

         I agree with the article that a student’s errors can be analyzed for growth. The student’s errors can be eye opening to what each student struggles with fundamentally in their writing. I think that it would be difficult as a teacher to look individually at each student’s errors and help them based of that. It would take a lot of time and may be hard if students are all over the place on their strong points and weak points. Yet teacher’s should [rhetorical fragment beginning with a coordinating conjunction for emphasis].

      When looking at the alternative DOL's, the one that stuck out to me most was the first one where you take a simple sentence and make it into a more complex one. I would let students choose between making the simple sentence into a compound or complex sentence. I think that students tend to write a lot of simple sentences in papers and this exercise might help their sentence variety [compound sentence joined with a comma+FANBOYS/Coordinating Conjunction]. I would have students use their own writing from previous works for this activity, which I believe would help the students best. It would be best to look at their personal work so that they understand the context behind it and see how they can change things in their own writing.

Here is a simple sentence that I wrote in a blog for global literature: I personally feel that killing animals of any kind is very wrong. I would make it into a compound sentence like this: I personally feel that killing animals of any kind is very wrong, yet people continue to believe that poaching animals is a good way to make money and think it is morally okay. This sentence becomes compound because it has an independent clause + a comma and coordinating conjunction + another independent clause. In addition to this activity, I would teach first about independent clauses verse dependent clauses. I would also teach about coordinating conjunctions before doing this activity. This way students can bring together all of these things to learn how to make a complex and compound sentences. I also might incorporate making the students into sentences (like we did in class) to learn these concepts before doing it with their own writing.

Chapter 7 Response

In this blog post I will be practicing using an aside set off by parentheses. I also tried to use a list without using an “and” at the end of the list. I choose to try these two patterns because they seemed to be the more common ones that I could incorporate into my own writing.

When I read chapter seven of Grammar Alive! on sentencing diagramming, I was overwhelmingly confused. Each step added on more lines and lines and got very complex. I did not get it when I first read it and I do not get it now after reading it several times. I think that the entire concept of sentencing diagramming is very confusing, and if it is confusing to me (a college student) it will most likely be confusing to a middle school student learning about sentence structure [an aside set off by parentheses]. Overall I do not think the concept would be beneficial to students. I think that it would make students frustrated who do not pick up on it right away (it really only caters to visual learners). I also think it would be difficult to teach [an aside set off by parentheses]. If I were to teach sentence diagramming, I think it would be beneficial to see how other English teachers teach this concept so that all types of learners could apply it. Personally I believe that if a teacher is going to teach grammar, it needs to be in elementary school and maybe into early middle school. I think that these grammar habits need to be taught awhile the students are learning to form sentences and learning words. Sentence diagramming might be a way to teach these concepts early on in the students learning career, I’m not really sure. I do not really enjoy the concept of teaching sentence diagramming as a visual aide because I do not think of grammar as a visual thing. I believe grammar to be more active processing and practicing more than looking at what a sentence looks like. As I said before, sentence diagramming may only help a small amount of students visually understand the concept and it may also confuse other students more. Also, another shortcoming of sentence diagramming is that it probably does not show how the rules can be broken in certain situations (which could lead to further confusion) [an aside set off by parentheses].

I was personally not taught very much grammar in my schooling other than the basic stuff (like verbs, nouns, adjectives) [an aside set off by parentheses] [list without final “and”]. From what I can remember, there were no activities that were visual representations of grammar other than worksheets. I really liked the visual representation of us becoming words in class and forming simple sentences then adding more words to create complex sentences. That really helped me and I think it would be a fun class activity for my futures classes when I become a teacher.