One student asked, “Why do we have to discuss teaching minority children the language of power? Why not just teach everyone acceptance?”

The power of language is a system that has been established by people in power. People in power typically lack the ability to see that there is a power system and thus are not willing to adjust their system. To teach acceptance is to change that power system which is not easily done in society. To teach only acceptance is to cause a disadvantage to those students when they enter the "real world" and have to face a system of power. Personally, I feel it is impossible to live without some power system. The best solution is to teach both disciplines of acceptance AND power to provide students with the most knowledge of what they will face in the "real world".

How to not call it Remedial

One of the questions I came up with when I read Delpit's article was whether anyone would view this more direct, basics approach to teaching language as a remedial approach, and how that could be avoided. Or, if it should be avoided in the first place.

It certainly seems like a remedial approach. Whereas the teacher can assume easily that the kids of WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) parents "get" language, because they use its Edited American English form at home, when it comes to those kids from different cultures, who might not even speak English, the teacher must be more direct. Being more direct means assuming the student knows less, and then teaching them what they don't know, while the students from the culture of power stir in their seats from boredom.

However, I don't see this as a particularly bad thing. If the students from other cultures need to learn more so they learn the language of power, then that's just how it has to happen. It's probably best not to refer to the "explicitly taught" class as remedial, you know, to avoid bullying and teasing, but isn't that essentially what it is? That is, aside, of course, from the connotations of its students being dumber, which would definitely be untrue.

Why not just teach acceptance?

One student asked, “Why do we have to discuss teaching minority children the language of power? Why not just teach everyone acceptance?”

The problem with simply teaching acceptance is that there are already institutions of power in place. If students wish to interact with that power, they will need to be able to communicate effectively. I think no matter who you talk, work, or interact with, there are adjustments in language made to suit that situation. If the goal of teaching acceptance is to change the way power operates in society and in language, there is a long road ahead, and only teaching acceptance is unlikely to substantially change the way power is already at work in the world.

Applying Delpit to the classroom

As a future teacher, I haven’t really thought beyond Spanish-English speaking students in the classroom. However, having read Delpit's piece, I am now conscious of the fact of the language of power, and must respond accordingly. I cannot say for certain because I need further explanation of process vs. skills oriented learning, but I think I am more inclined to skills—although I think a good balance is central to student learning. I think I probably would have “dumbed down” myself (tried to pretend that I didn’t have the power I did) in the classroom had I not read this article. I think I would have tried to mix that with a standards-emphasized learning environment, but now I don’t know if that is possible. I definitely want to be liked by the students, but to pretend that I function outside of the culture of power could potentially hamstring my teaching style, career or otherwise.

Prompts for Delpit

Your assignment is to respond to one of the following questions related to Lisa Delpit’s “The Silenced Dialogue.” Aim for about 100-150 words, and post it to your team blog. Please follow the following guidelines: 1. Identify your entry with a title that suggests the content. 2. Single space.

You may respond to other people’s posts through the comment feature. You may also read the blogs of the other groups by going to: http://writingcommonsone.blogspot.com/ http://writingcommonstwo.blogspot.com/ etc. through http://writingcommonssix.blogspot.com/ You can add a comment to other blogs by using the comment feature. You can only post to your own blog.

Questions (choose one):
1. If you are preparing to teach, what are you taking away from Delpit’s article regarding language and power that might help you as a teacher, and how could you apply these ideas to your proposed level of teaching?
2. One student asked, “Why do we have to discuss teaching minority children the language of power? Why not just teach everyone acceptance?” Respond.
3. For one of Delpit’s specific proposals (refer to the article), discuss the challenges of implementation. How could these challenges be addressed?
4. A topic of your own choosing.

Thinking over the variations with grammar, I wonder if a good way to think about the relation of grammar to vocabulary in language is like a skeleton to flesh. Also, I'm wondering if anyone else had some difficulties trying to figure out the pedestals. I'm not sure if I fully understand them.

Kolln

What I found that was interesting about chapter two is simply the mechanics of sentence structure. It was interesting just to see how everything worked together and how many variations were possible with different patterns, or even with the same pattern. It was also interesting to see how complex forms developed from the simple forms, allowing for more variations.

Chapter 2: The Realizening

I think I have some interesting realizations to share after reading Chapters One and Two of Kolln.

The first realization I have is the paradox of how cool and how frustrating I find all of this term-mongering. For instance, I have often wondered what exactly it is called when you identify a noun by "pointing" to it. I now know that this is called a demonstrative pronoun, like that sugar bowl or those houses with the smoke billowing out the windows. However, I can see that there will be lots and lots of these definitions, and if "grammar" is any example, many of these words will have many distinct definitions. To keep them all straight then, I think, will be difficult and confusing. Thus, this is the paradox I have discovered in ChapterTwo.

The second realization I had while reading Chapters One and Two was that my own previous thoughts on grammar were echoed by the book. The thought kept occurring to me, "That's what I thought" or "That's the same argument I used" when, for instance, I would argue for why one sentence was correct and the other was not. This is comforting to me. I only hope I don't find that I have argued for something the wrong way and constructed some sort of parallel grammar where, say, nouns don't necessarily need predicates to form a clause, but that makes perfect sense to me, thus ruining my future career as a grammarian.

Those are my two realizations. I do hope they have been worth your time.

Idiom Idiyum

One thing which interests me a great deal that I have written about in blogs before is the use of idioms. Kolln wrote, “The term idiom refers to a combination of words whose meaning cannot be predicted from the meaning of its parts; it is a set expression that acts as a unit.” Some examples we commonly use would be things like catch some Zs, hit the books, or on crack.

I think that quite often we appreciate our own language in an ethnocentric way, neglecting to find the beauty in languages which are not our own. One way I’ve found of appreciating the unique cultural differences of others is by finding idioms in other languages and asking for their translations in English. I also try to find equivalents of English idioms to see if other languages have similar ones.

I have a friend who is living in China right now, and he acquainted me with an idiom for something being difficult. Like pulling feathers from an iron chicken. This seems very similar to our “like talking to a brick wall,” or “like pulling teeth.” They also have like scales on tofu, meaning “obvious.” I am not sure why, but I always find learning new idioms and traditions from other languages interesting. In Russian, when you wish a person good luck, you can use the phrase commonly used to wish a hunter well. You would wish them “neither down nor feathers,” and in response, they tell you to “go to hell.” This is interesting in that the tradition uses an idiom, and people wish for and respond with the exact opposite of what they really hope (not wanting to jinx the other person). While I’m not sure why I find these differences in speech so fascinating, I am always hoping to learn new idioms from other languages. If anyone has some they would like to share, I would greatly appreciate it.

I haven’t always been as interested in idioms as I am now, and I think it’s because I have lived in many places where there really was not a variety of different languages, dialects, or major differences in writing present. Going to college and working with ESL students has helped me to appreciate the immense variety of languages and ideas that are different from those to which I am accustomed.

A question I would pose to others would be this. Some cultures circle round an argument before coming to their point. Some start with the most drastic statement and then slowly move towards stating what it is they are really after. To what degree do you tend to think of English as “absolute” or forget that others might be communicating in different ways when talking to people or perhaps doing a peer review for a non-native speaker? If you're a non-native speaker, do you find that you think of your first language in those same ways? Do you always take into account the differences in language, even in the country in which you've grown up? Do you make assumptions, as I often have, based solely upon a particular view, having grown up in the United States where I speak and write Standard English?

Kolln!

Well, I had never heard of the ten sentence patterns, so seeing those was kind of confusing, and it may take some getting used to--although they make sense. I also didn't think of grammar in ways other than rules for writing and speaking; the four definitions we discussed in class were suprisingly refreshing.

As far as questions go, I remember diagramming sentences in grade school or middle school (I don't specifically remember which), but after that there was little attention paid to it at all. I definitely remember diagramming nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositional phrases, so what are other people's experiences with diagramming? Had a lot of you done it before?

Kolln and Sentence patterns

Chapter two was full of new information for me. I do not remember learning to diagram sentences in elementary school or high school. I liked that Kolln explained what a noun phrase, a noun, a verb phrase and a verb was. The whole diagraming thing brings a new light to the English language for me: it doesn't matter if you know all the rules, what matters is if you know all the exceptions to and modifications of the rules.

How has your grammar changed during your college years? Which definition (from Kolln) do you associate as your definition of grammar?

Thoughts on Kolln

One thing that I noticed in the first chapter of Kolln, something I had never thought of before, was the fact that grammar can be defined in a lot of different ways. I had always thought of grammar as a formal system of rules designed to help us speak and write properly (kind of a combination of Grammars 2 and 3), but there is a lot more to it. I never thought of my innate knowledge of the English language as a form of grammar. Also, I didn't know about prescriptive and descriptive grammar, or any of the ideas discussed in the Modern Linguistics section of the chapter. Did anyone else have this same experience, or one similar?

Also, I was wondering if anyone else had problems in the diagramming homework with the pedestal for prepositional phrases? I get confused about when to use the pedestal and when to keep it on the main line.

Welcome to your grammar blog

Welcome to Writing Commons One, your group grammar blog. For your first post, I'd like you to identify something in the first two chapters of Kolln that interests you and share your thoughts with your group. Also, pose a question related to your post to which others might respond.

You are also welcome to use your blog to converse with your group members about the course content and assignments, get help, clarify things you don't understand.

Enjoy!
vtb