One point that he made was that teachers often hear how a student speaks and does not consider that that is not how a student may write. I have discovered that myself I think that I've been lucky in that my English teachers have been aware of this fact. I myself have noticed it in the short time that I've already spent with some students in the class I am observing.
When I was in high school, I noticed this among my friends. Teachers never said it out loud, I think, but I was always aware that writing and speaking were two separate things. Friends who used certain phrases, much like the girl in the interview with "sort of," would refrain from trying to write things such as "ya know" or "like." (I actually had to stop myself from writing "like" instead of "such as" just now!) Since I've seen this before (I was the proofreader in my group of friends), I do know that speech does not relate to intelligence all of the time, but one would really have to get to know that before one hear's a student speak, which is a bit of an impossibility.
I feel that this is a simple way to teach students how to write. Just tell them not to write like they speak. The girl I told that in my class observations seemed to immediately understand what I meant. Writing should be formal, speech is much more commonly informal. I completely understood this chapter's point on appropriate times to use certain speech; we had talked about it in class, after all.
My only question that I could pose from this chapter, though, is: How might informal writing evolve? I believe that ti has greatly in the information age. Internet -- chat rooms, instant messaging, forums -- text messaging, emails -- all of these have developed much faster communication, and the more quickly we can communicate, the less time we will take to take care of how we write. Teachers already have to tell students not to write in text messaging speak -- with "lol" and "btw" and using numbers in place of words! How might we, as future teachers, have to deal with this? Will it only get worse? I am sure that it will.
I find it hard to pose a question about the actual reading. I understood it well and agreed completely, I think.
I think that you have pointed out something that is supported by Lisa Delpit’s piece “No Kinda Sense.” In this particular writing, Delpit quotes her daughter as saying that she knows how to code switch, referring to when she uses AAV and standard English. Her point is that she recognizes when each is or is not appropriate. Likewise, when we write, we code switch in a similar way. As you said, the way you and students you have seen write is different from the way you all speak. You know that standard English is appropriate for writing papers and such. In your observation of modern informal writing, you acknowledged that there is also a place to use less than standard English, to use something closer to the way that you speak. This distention, of knowing when to speak which way and when to write which way, are both related situations in that they are situations in which people code switch to stay true their own personal dialects and to confirm to a more widely accepted standard English.
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ReplyDeleteGood points, Kaci and Ashandre, and here's a key point for all of us teachers of language: the need for "code-switching" is what's called TACIT knowledge--something many of us "just know" even though we've never been taught. The problem is, not everybody knows it; some argue that tacit knowledge is kept from groups of people in order to oppress them. Regardless of why, the fact remains that what comes naturally to many of us doesn't come naturally to all the student we teach. The good news is that the solution is straightforward: we teach it to them. Time and time again, when we look at why students aren't succeeding, we find that, what do you know, we're not actually TEACHING them what we want them to know. Instead we're assuming they know it, that they have that tacit knowledge. Kind of crazy, ?no?
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