Week 15

YET AGAIN! The blog hates me. I have no idea why it isn't letting me separate into my paragraphs. <<1>> The concepts of “languages are learned mainly through imitation” and “parents usually correct young children when they make grammatical errors” are both intertwined closely in my mind. For example, I remember as a child my mother, being an exceptional English speaker, would correct mistakes that I made explicitly, both in vocabulary and grammar. I’ll never forget last semester learning that this corrective feedback is not always effective or has long-term effects: “what [this study] tells us is that children cannot depend on consistent corrective feedback in order to learn the basic structure of their language” (184). What a surprise! However, even though it might not have solidified some correct grammatical forms, I do believe that my mother’s explicit correction helped in some semantic and syntactic forms, as well as motivate to speak more properly in the short- and long-term. <<2>> “Highly intelligent people are good language learners” (#3). -What is essential is finding ways to engage the different kinds of ability that students bring to the learning environment (185) - We have been discussing all semester the linguistic and academic competence involved in the language learning process, but this particular concept left out the part of “social ability” in the equation. I was considering about the students who are geniuses, those with the highest IQ imaginable, but what if they have no social skills? The contextual factors must be taken into account of the students’ personality: do they have social anxiety? do they not like speaking up? are they irritable with certain students? are they inclusive in group projects? If Vygotsky among other theorists become part of our teaching philosophy, we must keep in mind how to engage our students both academically and socially. <<3>> Point #10 causes a bit of a controversy in my mind. Having taught high school for a semester (which is a bit more difficult in regards to state and local standards), I just wonder if this idea of “presenting grammatical rules one at a time” is an idealistic statement or realistic statement? Does this apply more to some concepts than to others? Is this more relevant for one age group or a certain level over another? These were just a few questions that entered into my thoughts. <<4>> Maybe I am an oddball, but this particular sentence in the article really started me analyzing: “In communities where policy makers have encouraged English in deference to the economic and educational opportunities it may provide in the context of economic globalization, there is a near-chauvinistic resurgence of nationalism” (14). As they would say in Spanish, ¡Uy, qué fuerte! (What a strong statement!) I am taking a Spain culture course this semester, and we have discussed nationalism at an overwhelming level (trying to justify my train-of-thought here). I think about the States of California and Arizona, the two also mentioned in the article. I think we tend to be a very ethnocentric nation, for example our media coverage, geography knowledge and monolingual abilities. However, when you think about it, we do not have an OFFICIAL language. Yes, English is our main language, but it is not our official one. So on one hand, I think this fact allows for a diversity of cultures and languages to be appreciated in the United States. On the other hand, why do we sometimes discourage the use of other languages within our classroom? Why do we take that subtractive approach? Maybe we feel intimidated. Maybe we haven’t been properly equipped with the appropriate resources. Or maybe this statement is correct: we feel as if a part of our tradition and American standards would die if we did not constantly defer to the use of the English language. Then yes, that would be nationalism at its fullest.