Week 7 (September 29) |
4:00-4:20p |
Gather Yourself Up
|
4:20-4:30p |
Connect
Zoom room opens so that we can say hello and enter as fully as possible in such a space. |
Presentations
|
|
BREAK: 5:45-6:00pm
Open Sessions
|
1. Announcements, Reminders & Check-Ins . . .
|
Tonight's Check-In: What's going well for you in the course right now? What's NOT going well for you in the course right now?
As a note of process: We will do this openly tonight so that we can have a group conversation. However, this is not necessarily sufficient. Next week, you will get time to do an anonymous google survey that will ask you the same question.
As a note of process: We will do this openly tonight so that we can have a group conversation. However, this is not necessarily sufficient. Next week, you will get time to do an anonymous google survey that will ask you the same question.
2. WRITING ACTIVITY: "Academic Language"
"Dichotomous framing in both the scholarly literature and among educators suggests that academic language is a special kind of language that warrants a complet differentiation from the rest of language that is framed as non-academic. Yet, it is unclear to me whether the distinction reflects actual language use. After all, any community of practice has content-specific vocabulary and utilizes complex sentence structures. For example, baseball announcers use content-specific vocabulary that have specific meanings in baseball such as “strike,” “ball,” “inning,” and “homerun” that would likely be unfamiliar to somebody with no background in baseball. I have also personally witnessed the complex sentence structures used by young people trading Pokémon cards. Yet, neither of these linguistic practices are deemed so noteworthy as to warrant us dichotomizing baseball from non-baseball language or Pokémon language from non-Pokémon language as if a baseball announcer or a Pokémon card trader is somehow shutting down other aspects of their linguistic repertoire. A similar description could be offered about this article that I am currently writing. I am making a range of linguistic choices that include linguistic features that would typically be associated with academic language (including content-specific vocabulary and complex sentence structures) alongside linguistic features not often associated with these linguistic practices (such as my pervasive use of the first person alongside personal anecdotes). When I have pointed to some of these complexities to scholars and educators they have often been intrigued yet remained convinced that academic language is a list of empirical linguistic practices that functions in a qualitatively different way than non-academic language and that their racialized students lacked a strong foundation in these language practices.
|
My contention is that academic language is not a list of empirical linguistic practices but rather a raciolinguistic ideology that frames the home language practices of racialized communities as inherently deficient (Flores & Rosa, 2015). Raciolinguistic ideologies were foundational to European colonialism and continue to be used to justify the continued maintenance of white supremacy by suggesting that the roots of racial inequalities lie in the linguistic deficiencies of racialized communities and that the solution to these racial inequalities is to modify their language practices (Rosa & Flores, 2017). A raciolinguistic perspective shifts the focus from the linguistic practices of the speaker/writer toward the perceiving practices of the listener/reader. From this perspective, whether one is positioned as successfully engaged in academic language is primarily determined by the white listening/reading subject whose perceptions have been shaped by histories of colonialism that continue to frame racialized speakers as coming from communities with linguistic deficiencies that need to be policed and corrected. Considering the important role of the white listening/reading subject, it is insufficient, and perhaps even misguided for educational linguists [and everyone else involved in language education] to compile supposed linguistic features of academic language and introduce them to educators." [words in small italics are Carmen's]
For our writing activity tonight, we will look closely at this quote from Flores above and think of ourselves in relation to it. Once again, you will be asked to do some writing that you place in your google folder for this class.
CLICK HERE FOR THE DOC FOR YOUR HANDOUT/ACTIVITY
(here is the google link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FvzEEeEZhE-da_pjuR6XIHPZhCC717FE/view?usp=sharing)
Feel free to take winding notes, doodle your thoughts and upload a photo, craft prose that takes narrative turns, etc... Remember: writing is NOT owned by schooling to be used solely as a tool to “test” content understanding and/or performances of white grammar. This is also YOUR google folder and YOUR ideas. Sing it and bring it!
CLICK HERE FOR THE DOC FOR YOUR HANDOUT/ACTIVITY
(here is the google link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FvzEEeEZhE-da_pjuR6XIHPZhCC717FE/view?usp=sharing)
Feel free to take winding notes, doodle your thoughts and upload a photo, craft prose that takes narrative turns, etc... Remember: writing is NOT owned by schooling to be used solely as a tool to “test” content understanding and/or performances of white grammar. This is also YOUR google folder and YOUR ideas. Sing it and bring it!
3. Sharing and Open Discussions
Site Designed/Maintained by Carmen Kynard
|