Hi Everyone,
This week, we're talking about home language and classroom language in a variety of contexts. The Ways with Words reading is an ethnography that examines the langauge practices of children growing up in two homogenous communities (Roadville and Trackton) and how those language practices interact with the expected norms of the 'townspeople' discourse that the kids encounter when they get into school.
For example, the Trackton kids grow up in a community with a high priority placed on imaginative, inventive storytelling that is competitive in focus. In Roadville, stories are only told by certain people, are based in fact, and have a moral resolution. Both of these children face conflict when they get to school where they are expected to be able to remain focused in their language practices (in other words, not get too inventive) yet also be able to think for themselves (in other words, get beyond the facts).
In the June Jordan reading, a conscious decision was made by the students to write a letter of protest to the police using Black English rather than Standard English. They knew that their letter would be ignored because of the "incorrect" language, because they didn't use the language of the police, but they decided that it was best to stay with their home language.
In the "IM-ing" reading, English teachers debate how to respond to student use of IM-type discourse in their school writing, a type of home language becoming more and more prevalent in our society (and used for humor in certain cell-phone commericals).
Yesterday, we talked about how our home languages have influenced our challenges in moving toward sophisticated analysis. We can all do the "breaking down and summarizing" part of the analysis just fine, but, we often have a hard time interpreting the summaries. We have a hard time figuring out how to determine what is interesting, and what might be significant.
This problem is not new to our class. It is probably the most common challenge of any person getting into college and struggling with the new expectations of academic thinking.
So, I'm really curious what it is about the variety of home langauges that we come from that make it more challenging to do this second part of analysis. Are there language practices involved in analysis that just were not prioritized in home languages that most college students experienced? Are we not taught to seek out and discuss the interesting elements in an array of experiences?
Please respond to this with your thoughts, considering how our home languages may not have prepared us for the classroom language of analysis.
Thanks,
Tiffany
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2 comments:
Are we not taught to seek out and discuss the interesting elements in an array of experiences?
- Personally, I would say no. When I read this, I automatically start thinking about every personal story I've ever told and/or any conversation I've ever had. When I tell a story to some friends, I know I don't have to stop midway through and answer any questions...I know, that I can just keep going with the story and they on their own, will break down what I'm saying to stay on pace. They will "Summerize" the story itself, from the moment I start talking up until the end. They're not worried about finding the significance to the story, because that might take a little more time, or put them in jepardy of losing where I'm at in the story.
We haven't been taught to look in a finer detail with most dialogue. We just look for the things that are easily found and stick with them, so we in the end can see the big picture.
It wasn't till I read this particular sentence in this blog, that I realized how lazy we are with understanding exactly what people are saying. We never look into it, we only skim the service to get the "Jist" of it all - to create our own opinion.
- Mike Swain
I think that home language isa very casual conversation all the time, as Mike said. People in my family tell stories all the time, and they are usually for entertainment value, so there is no need to analyze it. And many time people who are telling thier story and want everyone to understand the importance of it, will tell us what they discovered from it. Whether it is a lesson or something. There is not really an environment besides school where people are expected to look at the deeper meaning of situations or language. We are a fast paced society, and everyone just wants to know what they need to get by. I know in my family we don't talk about subjects and go into detail anyalzing what they mean on deeper levels. We just discuss the facts and maybe a little of our opinion. But this does put many of us at a disadvantage when we are placed in schools, as many of us are finding out now. I think that it is just a matter of retraining our brains to think, and hopefully we can learn techniques that we can apply to daily situations to understand deeper meaning of things.
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