• Bialystok & Hakuta

• Cazden

Bialystok & Hakuta (1994): In Other Words. Excerpts from chapter 6: Culture

Read the intro through page 164. Then skim or skip to page 180, "Constructed meanings, constructed cultures," and read to the end. The chapter is rather dense in spots. The questions below might be helpful as advance organizers, ways to activate relevant prior knowledge before reading new material and pointers to the parts of the chapter most related to my purposes in assigning it.

My purpose in assigning the reading: To introduce the section of the course on discourse by focusing on language use. Because of the linguistic diversity in your future classes, issues of language use are important to your professional development. For example, what is your role in modeling, correcting, or instructing "proper" English usage? Is this the same or different from the role of World Language teachers? (WL teachers, how does your role differ from that of your colleagues?) When are ideas more important than the form in which they are communicated? How can the ways we use discourse invite participation or create barriers? How are issues of power implicit in issues of language use? What are the politics of being or becoming multilingual?

The authors describe Vygotsky's views on the relationship between language and thought: "...although language, thought, and action are distinct psychological functions...the role of society was to bring about their integration and thus make possible the creation of new levels of thinking. (p. 183)" Think about the use of language in your own discipline (or language, in the case of WL teachers). This includes specialized vocabulary, concept words, modes of communicating or making arguments, and the like. How can you, as a teacher, help students make connections among this specialized language, thought, and action? How is this related to earlier readings on schemata (e.g., Moses, Duckworth, Snow & Sweet, Flores-Dueñas) or representations (e.g., Wilson, Shulman & Richerts)?

Language and identity. "...language is a powerful marker of social identity, which permeates all its structural aspects." (p. 186) What assumptions do you make about students based on their use of language? Where do the schemata that you are using to make these assumptions come from? What are the implications for your practice as a teacher? How does the ability to use the specialized language in your discipline position students in school and beyond?

Language ability defined: Bialystok & Hakuda quote Clark & Holquist (1984) as saying "the ability to use langauge is not defined by the mastery one acquires over the kind of knowledge of syntactic rules, word lists, or grammatical norms so beloved of linguists. Language mastery consists rather in being able to apply such fixed features in fluid situaions, or in other words, in knowing not the rules but the usage of language (p. 213)" (p.185) Do you agree with this statement?

What language(s) should we teach? "One perspective is that the second-language pedagogy we caricatured ['Where is the pencil?'] reflects a static view of language, mostly focused on grammar. It does not enable the participants--neither techer nor students--to use the structures at their disposal in constructive communication, again as occurred spontaneously in the airplane conversation." (p. 187)

Read the story related by Dennis Preston at the bottom of p. 187 about the teachers who resisted teaching colloquial forms of English to migrant students, such as "hafta" or "gonna." What do you think about the teachers' position?

The politics of multilingualism: Consider the knowledge that the two bilingual high school students brought to the poem translations at the end of this chapter. In what ways might you use the cultural and linguistic knowledge of bilingual or bicultural students in your classroom? (For a science teaching example, take a look at the Semken (2005) article on place-based education here. How did Semken use the ethno-geological knowledge and language of his Navajo students to teach "scientific" geology?)

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Courtney Cazden (1988) excerpts from Classroom Discourse

The first two pages of this reading are assigned solely because Cazden introduces the IRE pattern of discourse here. Despite the fact that this chapter was published in 1988, IRE is still the most common discourse pattern found in schools. The rest of the reading is about IRE and the alternatives to it, and the implications for student participation and learning.

Cazden begins chapter four by describing different purposes for classroom discourse and providing a wide variety of transcript snippets to illustrate discourse patterns. What discourse patterns did you notice in your observations over the last two weeks? Did they seem to suit the teacher's purposes? Who was engaged in the discourse? Who was disengaged? Do you recognize similar patterns among Cazden's examples?

Consult your notes from the videos shown in class on Tuesday. Using ideas in Cazden, what interpretations do you have for the patterns you observed? Be prepared to discuss these in class (we'll see parts of the videos again)

Consider your own future teaching in your subject area. What are the various purposes of classroom discourse you can think of in your subject? What kinds of interaction patterns do you think will serve your students best? Why? What can you do as a teacher to support those kinds of interaction patterns?

Try keeping a record of turn-taking during a class session (ours or one of your other classes). What patterns of talk and participation do you notice? How is the instructor influencing the discussion (through actions or inactions, talk, pauses, questions...)? How are students influencing the discussion? In what ways does the interaction support or hinder student learning, in your view?

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