How does language relate to power, social standing

Communication

• Communication is more than an exchange of words, it is an exchange of consciousness. Words take on meanings based on social and power relationships between speakers. That meaning is related to the social, cultural, political and historical context between speakers. -Mikhail Bakhtin

Communication Brainstorm

• Examples of the implications of social and power relationships involved in communication
• -cultural
• -political
• -historical context

Communication Brainstorm Continued

• Strategies educators can use to be sensitive to the power relationships involved in communication

Dialect

• Systematic differences in the way different groups of people speak the same language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics)
• Dialect becomes a standard language as a result of power and is reinforced through written media, oral broadcast, and academic settings.

Misuse of Dialect

• Social and political reality that certain dialects carry more prestige and power. As a result fluency in the standard language is an educational goal because it is an instrument of power that may offer broader social, economic and political opportunities

Dialect Brainstorm

• Strategies educators can implement to achieve fluency in standard language while recognizing and honoring different dialects

Language

• Language is interwoven with early socialization to family and community and forms an important element of personal identity.
• Adding a standard language requires the expansion of one's personal, social, racial and ethnic identity.

Languages Continued

• Languages migrate, evolve and change over time
• Language variety has an effect on status, prestige and power relations
• Language variety can contribute to the maintenance of social, political and economic inequalities among users
• Social, political, economic opportunities
• Personal identity

Language Brainstorm

• How do you plan to address language differences as an educator? How will you validate all models of standard language?

Answer Key

• 1. Consciousness
• 2. cultural, political, historical context
• 3. written media, oral broadcast, academic settings
• 4. cultural, political, historical context
• 5. Identity

Traits and Sequences in English Language Acquisitions

Importance of Recognizing Traits and Sequence

• Help you determine students level of development and determine realistic goals
• Discern which errors are typical at developmental stages in order to better plan instruction

Interlanguage

• Systematic evolving rules and patterns English language learners utilize to grasp target language. It is dynamic in that they gradually grow over time to resemble target language

Fossilization

• Plateau in second language development without achieving native like fluency
• It can become the norm among a social group and passed on to generations resulting in a new language variant that plays a role in the evolution of language

Selecting Morphemes

• Progression of verb forms
• 1. - ing ending
• 2. Irregular past tense (ate, went, saw)
• 3. Regular past tense -ed ending
• 4. Differentiate irregular and regular past tense forms

Negation Progression

• Placing no before negated item -No want that
• Don't emerges but not marked for person -I don't can say that
• Negating word placed after auxiliary verb -They was not nice
• Do is correct most of the time, sometimes correctly mark verb for person, place of tense - We didn't went to the show

Question Formation Sequence

• Earliest stages rely on rising intonation of one word
• Use do and question words at the beginning of sentence but without subject word inversion
• Gradual begin conventional word order
• Finally able to use complex questions

School factors that influence development

• Social context of language learning environment
• Primary language development
• Learner age and interplay of sociocultural and psychological factors
• Teacher expectations and treatment of errors

Assessment Answer Key

• Fossilization
• Interlanguage
• Social context of learning environment, primary language development, learner age and sociocultural and psychological factors, teacher expectations and treatment of errors
• Help determine students level of development, realistic goal setting, better planned instruction
• Rely on rising intonation of single word