Unit 11: Language Comparison (Spanish and English)

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Unit 10: Accents & Immigration

Activity 1 Topic 1
The recordings of various dialects are interesting to browse through. In the first website, with the maps and flags, there were some predictable accents (like those in North Carolina and Arkansas). However, there were also some surprising accents, like the one in New Orleans. The recording from the native-born New Orleans resident didn’t sound like the accent that is typically associated with that region, which may indicate that her upbringing was influenced by people who were not natives of southern Louisiana. The ku.edu website was more thorough, and had various accents from each state. This is interesting to see how even within states there are pronunciation differences. The one downside is that the differences between accents was not as easily identifiable as in the website that had transcribed the excerpts into IPA; with that resource, one could follow along and see exactly where divergent occurred (for example, where one dialect had a ‘shwa’ where another did not). The language trainers game was challenging, but mostly for non-US accents. I got all of the American accents, and most of the British ones, but none of the non-Anglo accents. This is interesting, as it indicates a bias towards the NS accents, at least for me.
Activity 1 Topic 2
I think the interaction between immigration attitudes and their effect on the classroom is highly dependent on the learning environment. In the US, I taught in the Bronx, which is the most ethnically diverse county in the country. It was common knowledge that we had undocumented students, but it never an issue, probably because anyone who teaches there knows what the environment is before they accept the job. It’s almost like the ‘we,’ as seen being discussed by the psychologist in the ABC videos, is redefined from the get-go. In fact, the white teachers are the ‘others’ in that borough. We were advocating for all of our learners’ needs, regardless of perceived immigration status. And we did accept a ‘standard English’ when teaching and modeling for our students (Topic A) who typically spoke urban English (O’Grady, p.499) or Spanglish (p.501). But I imagine the situation is more precarious in places where immigrants are a small minority. In certain environments, the ‘we’ may be more rigid and students who are perceived to be immigrants may not be accepted immediately into this construct. I imagine that ELL teachers in these contexts would be a greater focal point for frustrations that other teachers may not have anticipated (in the same way that Special Ed teachers are sometimes resented by mainstream teachers as the special needs of their students increase). Overall, though, I think that the vast majority of teachers in all parts of the country are interested in teaching their students and simply want the tools necessary to do so. Now, I have to add something that was not in the original question. How would my own feelings impact my classroom, vis-à-vis immigration? Minimally, since I don’t feel like I am an INS officer. I teach whoever the school says is in my classroom. If a student asks me my opinion, I would defer to non-class times just as I do about any personal issues (abortion, politics, etc.)
Activity 2
One of the strongest ways sites like the PBS website can benefit educators is to help illustrate the effects of language beyond sheer communication. We all live with accents and dialects every day, but seldom stop to think about the role that language plays when intertwined with ethnicity, gender, education, etc. Discussing these elements of language in class will not only enlighten learners as to the origins of certain dialects (like the working theories behind the development of AAE) but will also raise awareness as to how these dialects affect status and opportunity today (like with the experiment of using different speaking patterns over the phone). And this research is also a great jumping-off point for discussing pragmatic contexts (such as the ‘Have you had a bowel movement today?’ example, being appropriate in a doctor’s office, but few other places).

Unit 9: Grammar & Grammar Instruction

1. His brother bought land last winter. Later, the economy was bad, so he sold the land. John loves fishing but wants to be a better fisherman. John’s boat’s name is ‘Troubled Waters.’ When he was sad, he painted his boat blue and cleaned it. John asked his brother what he thought of the blue, clean boat. His brother laughed and said, “You always want compliments.” John didn’t have a lot of energy, so he didn’t argue with his brother. He just made more nets. John wants to catch more fish tomorrow with the nets.

2. Vocabulary may also be challenging to the ELL student; for example, I replaced ‘crashed’ when referring to the economy, since I was not sure if this would be confusing in this context. Similarly, I wasn’t sure if the word ‘successful’ may be too cumbersome. It is hard to judge lexicon when we are dealing with a hypothetical audience whose linguistic background is unclear, underlining the importance of knowing one’s students and performing needs assessment. Other words, like compliment, I left in the story since I felt they couldn’t be translated well without changing the meaning. To address these challenges, new vocabulary will have to be introduced before the story is read. We could, for example, practice giving ‘compliments’ to each other as a class. The other glaring issue is that once the story is changed, some of the meanings change subtly, as well. For example, when one just uses the present and past, it appears as if the story is taking place in real time, which is a different timeline than the original story. This would only need to be addressed once the students were actually working with those verb tenses, though. If the purpose of the text was simply to explore the new ideas and play with the story itself, it could be accomplished with the ‘watered down’ version.

4. Although there are anomalies to any generalization, I think that grammar cannot typically be acquired through immersion alone. There were examples of this lack of acquisition provided by Ms. Azar (like the college freshman writing juvenile criminal justice). This student clearly didn’t acquire enough grammar to be successful at the college level, even though he had been ‘immersed.’ And I think another point worth remembering is that there is no standard for ‘immersion.’ We cannot control how our ELL students experience English outside of our classrooms. Do they speak it with friends, or at home? We can’t assume that immersion looks any particular way, so we have to stay focused on that which we can control in the learning environment. Mr. Swan made a good point when he stated that grammar is patterns, and our learners need help identifying those patterns. Even if a student can gain successful competency without explicit grammar instruction, would some ‘hybrid’ (Azar) be destructive? It would only succeed in explaining the language phenomenon that s/he has already noticed. And my best ‘evidence’ (Swan) for thinking that explicit instruction is required—at least in part—is the success I’ve seen with my NS students in my Social Studies classes after simply pointing out the grammar pattern to them. Once it was made explicit, they were able to recognize the correct way to write or say their idea.

Unit Eight: Violating Grice's Maxims

THE MAXIM OF RELEVANCE: I remember once when my family and I were in Turkey, where discussing another person’s weight is considered fair game for conversation. My Turkish host mother began discussing the weight gain of my American friend, in English. She looked at me to continue the conversation, but instead of maintaining the given topic, I quickly changed gears and began to discuss plans for the day. I did this because I didn’t want my friend to feel singled out or even mocked, which may have been the interpretation considering the pragmatic rules surrounding that particular topic (weight) in the US. I did not try to signal this, since I wanted it to appear natural (again, not to put my friend ‘on the spot.’)

THE MAXIM OF QUALITY: Recently, it was raining in Bogotá, as it has been doing a lot this month. I was with my Colombian friend who always joins me in mutual ‘competitive teasing’ about the superiority of our native countries (to include ‘best climate.’) When I greeted her in the rain, I pointed out the wonderful, typical sunny day that we were enjoying in Bogotá. This was clearly not true, and I lied in order to achieve a sarcastic highlighting of the abysmal weather—hence signaling the inferiority of ‘her’ city’s climate. I signaled the sarcasm by becoming overly excited at the observation—even more excited than I would get if it truly had been sunny—with voice inflexion and exaggerated facial expressions.

THE MAXIM OF QUANTITY: I continually violate the maxim of quantity, as well as most of my friends, in the following scenario: someone calls me and asks me what I’m doing, and I reply, ‘nothing.’ Now, assuming the questioner was not violating the quality maxim and honestly wanted to know what I was doing, my reply was much too short and uninformative. But I, like my friends, just feel this is an easier cue to signal: ‘it’s ok, I have time to talk.’ I mean, obviously I’m doing something, but I assume that the other person does not want to hear minute details such as “I’m doing school work” or “I’m making coffee,” which may actually lead them to assume I don’t want to talk to them. In other words, I give an uninformative answer since—in both US and Colombian cultures—it is an acceptable and succinct way to give the caller license to interrupt my day and have a conversation with me.

THE MAXIM OF MANNER: Before my little cousins could read, we would spell out words that we didn’t want them to understand (as my older cousins had no doubt done with me before). One Easter, my uncle reported that my cousins had “R-A-B-B-I-T-S” waiting for them in their Easter basket. While this gave me the exact information I had asked for, it did so in a way that was obscure to my younger cousins. The reason, of course, was so that they would not decipher the surprise that awaited them. The only signal given was a look in their direction, just in case I may not understand why he’d switched to spelling a word out.

Unit Six Freeman & Freeman Exercises

3. a.Bagel: Comes from the Yiddish beygel which is a diminutive of the German boug- meaning ‘ring’ or ‘bracelet.’
b. Bimbo: The derogatory word for ‘loose woman’ comes from the Italian word bambino meaning ‘baby.’
c. Buck: The slang term for the American dollar is short for ‘buckskin’ which was used as currency in the American frontier.
d. Dork: This seemingly harmless put-down actually stems from its original meaning: ‘penis.’
e. Gringo: This term for ‘American’ comes from the Spanish ‘Gringo’ which was derived from griego, meaning Greek.
f. Picnic: Comes from the French pique-nique meaning to pick/eat a small coin/nothing
g. Sandwich: Named for the Earl of Sandwich who is credited with inventing the sandwich style of eating
h. Scram: Could have been derived from a shortening of the word ‘scramble’ or have come from the German schrammen, meaning to run away.
i. Soccer: Was an abbreviation of the proper noun Association Football which came to be shortened as “socca’” in British news stories.
j. Star: Comes from the old English word steorra.

Source: www.wordorigins.org

4.
Phonetic Demand Semantic Demand Etymological Demand
Cat Worry/worrisome Crepe
Dog Bride/bridal Lei
Run President/presidential Guacamole
Big Horse/horseshoe Dachshund
Cup Book/bookcase Gnocchi


9. /g/ sound: gawk, gecko, ghetto, giggle, glue, goblin, goose, grow, gun.
/j/ sound: gender, giblets, gym
The first generalization one can make from a casual list is that g sounds like /g/ whenever it is followed by a consonant (glue, grow). One can also be fairly certain that when followed by an ‘a,’ ‘o,’ or ‘u,’ the pronunciation is almost always /g/. The trickiest sound decisions seem to come before the vowels ‘e’ and ‘i’ and the glaring example ‘gym.’ For the academic linguist, the best generalization seems to be that words derived from Latin languages pronounce such g-words with the /j/ sound and Germanic or English based words maintain the /g/. For example, giblets comes from the French giberet and gender comes from the French word genre. And although gym exists in German, it seems to have come to English via a Latinization of a Greek word. In the contrasting example supplied in the text, for example, girl is Anglo-Saxon (not Latin) in origin; it comes from the word gerle or girle. Gin, however, does have Latin roots; it comes from the French genievre, meaning juniper, which gives gin its flavor. The generalization that one seems to be able to conclude here is that g-words from Latin origins are pronounced as /j/ when followed by ‘e’ or ‘i’ and, occasionally, ‘y.’ Otherwise, the word is probably pronounced as /g/.


Sources: www.thefreedictionary.com/giblets
www.dictionary.reference.com/browse/gymnasium
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl#Etymology

Mind Map 2

Unit Four: Allophones & Dialects

Application Questions 5 & 6 (Freeman & Freeman pp 96-7)

5) The first two obvious allophones are the [p] sound found in spit and the [p^h] sound found in pit. When you say ‘pit,’ that infamous puff of air is produced;  in ‘split,’ it is not.  A third allophone would be the [p] found after the word ‘stop’ or ‘top,’ where the ‘p’ is almost stopped before it starts.  A fourth may be the [p] sound in a word like ‘problem’ where, to accommodate for the coming ‘r’ sound, the mouth seems to move the production of the ‘p’ to a looser, more outward position (if you attempt to mimic the exact [p] from problem when attempting to say pit, you sound like Droopy Dog).   Similarly, when followed by a [u] sound like ‘pool,’ the [p] sound is produced with the lips already anticipating the [u], almost as in a kiss-blowing shape.  If one tries to say the [p] in pool starting with the [p] in pit, there is a almost a glide added to accommodate.  If a NNS ELL students does have [p] in their first language, this does not necessarily mean that they would have all allophones.  For example, when [p] is followed by [ɹ], it has a special anticipatory production; for an ELL student whose L1 does not have the [pr] or [pɹ] combination, that may have never had to produce the [p] this way before and, therefore, may have a slightly different bank of allophones from which to recall production.  Alternatively, they may add a vowel (in the way that English speakers would add a shwa after the [v] in the Russian word “vprog”)  yielding something like “puh-roblem.”

6) In my last school, my students from the Bronx spoke a different dialectic of English from my own Central Pennsylvania version.  Their pronunciation differed in words like “didn’t,” where the second [d] was replaced by a stop to yield “di-int.” The word mister didn’t end in “-er” but in “-ah.” And there is the very famous “fuhget” as in “Fuhget about you!” There were different vocabulary words, as well, that went beyond generational gaps.  I had never heard cursive referred to as “script,” before, and anyone who demonstrated strength—especially if it were a girl, as in, unfemininely tough—was referred to as “brolic.” And the syntax of Bronx natives is fairly well known; structures were the verb ‘to be’ is acceptably absent, for example (“She nasty!” or “You sorry”).  And the negative, similar to Southern U.S. dialect, was typically structured around “ain’t” which was acceptable for both past and present tenses (“That ain’t right” or “He ain’t come today”).  

With my peers, I have discussed how the British English dialect is considered superior, especially in movies.  One can think of several historical films based in ancient civilizations where the British accent is used; we surmised that this is to instill a more respectable ‘historicalness’ to the character.  Similarly, there are often dumber characters in movies assigned with Southern U.S. accents (like the dumb truck from Cars).  My Southern teachers took offense to this phenomenon.   With my students, however, they recognized that their dialect was perceived in a way that was different from the standard Midatlantic American dialect;  they were conscience of switching into that dialect when speaking to me or another teacher (“You right” with a peer became “You’re right” with me).  And they explicitly recognized the value of code switching so that their native dialect did not send a wrong message to a non-Bronx speaker (in a college or job interview, for example).  In that regard, therefore, I would submit that one should only try to speak in a standard dialect in cases where it is obvious that this would provide the speaker with a (perhaps subconscious) edge.  We could debate whether or not this should be the reality—a sort of classicism of dialects—but in the mean time, it is reality.  By recognizing it, we are not simply ‘caving in’ and catering to it, but empowering our students for real opportunities.

Minimal Pair Activity

Minimal Pair Activity

Activity Time: 5 Minutes

Level: Late Early Production – Early Speech Emergence

Goal:  The purpose of this activity is to inform and assess students’ ability to distinguish and reproduce individual English phonemes (in this case, vowels) using minimal pairs in way that does not confuse early learners with the concept of ‘rhyming.’



Approach:  The basic execution of the activity uses the sociolinguistic view; however, there is an easy, optional adaptation one can make to practice more conventional written spelling of the phonemes in the word recognition approach.



Do Now:  (None…this brief activity may be an appropriate Do Now by itself)



Activity I. Teacher will display an image similar to that below on the blackboard or Smartboard.
(sorry the images won't copy here...it's basically just a slice of bread, a line, a slice of bread and a plate; this is repeated two times)


The teacher will say the sound a consonant sound that is go in both slices of bread and randomly call on a student to come up and write the letter that makes the sound (for example, “both slices of bread are ‘p’.”)   Other students will be used to assist if the original student cannot produce the ‘p.’

            Afterwards, a different student will be called up to offer up a ‘meat’ for the sandwich.  (“What can go in between the bread?”)  A combination that doesn’t make a word (“pape”) will be congratulated, but the teacher will encourage the student to come up with a “meat” that makes a word. Once such a “meat” has been offered (ex., “u”) it will be written on the line.  The final, ready-to-eat ‘sandwich’ will then be placed on the “plate” (“pup”). 

            An identical set of two breads and a plate will be revealed below (see example above) and a new student will be asked to come up.  S/he will be informed that we’re using the same bread (“p”) but we want new meat!  S/he will be asked to think of another sound we can put in between the bread.  Note: silly words like ‘poop’ will not be discouraged; similarly, words with more complicated spellings like ‘pipe’ will not be discouraged…the proper convential spelling, in a word recognition view, can be fixed on the “plate” at the end.  In other words  p +  i  +  p  may become ‘pipe.’

            The teacher will have students repeat, in chorus, both words.  If the term ‘minimal pair’ is being taught, it will also be explained (and, if appropriate, noted) at this time.



Activity II.  Students will receive a handout identical to the design they have seen in the front of the room (similar to the set up above, however, the sandwich ‘pairings’ will be clearly delineated by squares or squiggles).  In pairs or groups of 3,  students will now be challenged to quickly come up and set up two ‘sandwiches’ for the bread that the teacher assigns.  Students will be told not to put the sandwich on the plate until the teacher checks that it is ready-to-eat.  The teacher may select different consonants (for example, “the first bread is a ‘p’ but the second bread is a ‘t’.”)  Once the breads have been announced, the pairs or teams will race to assemble two sandwiches that use the same bread(s).  Teacher will circulate and monitor.



Once time is up (1-2 min), teacher will randomly call on students to share out their ‘sandwiches,’ and lead the class in a choral repetition of the minimal pair that the group created.  This game may be repeated as time allows.



Word recognition adaptation:  To pay closer attention to more conventional spellings, the teacher can be more proactive in helping each group create an accurately spelled word on the ‘plate’ on their sheet;  similarly, at the end, the teacher can have the class copy down the correct spelling on their ‘plates’ as group(s)  share out.  In other words,  the teacher may either monitor for identification and practice of varying yet minimal pair-producing phonemes and have class say the word out loud, allowing for spelling mistakes on the ‘plate’ (socio-linguistic) OR ensure that spellings on the plate are accurate at every step of the process (word recognition) and have students say the spelling out loud, as well.

Test blog

Testing to make sure this works...