Week 3: Language Systems, Academic Vocabulary, and Language Variation

Importance of Language Systems for Teachers:

All the systems of language are interconnected and related to each other. Teachers must understand each system of language individually and how it interacts with other systems to help their students glean meaning from texts. Pragmatics is the most overstretching system of language. It aids in a reader/writer into recognizing the external coherence of a text. Pragmatics relates to the external context and functions of language. Teachers must be aware that language has many more functions beyond just informative function of communicating information. Children must be allowed to interact with various functions to fully understand how these functions work in the real world.

One important group of interconnected and related systems that teachers must be aware of is the text type, genre, and text structure. Teachers must understand that a particular text type can include several genres, and these genres follow particular text structures, thus creating internal coherence in text. For example: the text type of narrative usually uses the text structure of temporal order. This text type and structure are displayed in the genres of a novel, short story, mystery, or a folktale.  By showing that text follows these types of patterns, students are able to read expository, narrative, poetry, and dramatic texts in a manner that allows them to be more easily understood, as well as practice using these genres, patterns and genres in their own writing. Teachers must also remember to point out that one text can display various structures at the same time.

The close tie between the semantic system and the syntactic system is important for teachers to be aware of. Both of these systems are used to determine meaning through the use of internal context. By being aware of the relationships of words within a sentence, teachers can help their students use to create semantically meaningful sentences, which is where syntax comes in to help. Syntax gives grammatical names for the semantic systems/roles children have already assigned to words. Syntax is essential because it gives further structure to sentences. Students are able to create more complex sentences with knowledge of the syntactic system, as well as understand more complex sentences found in academic texts.

The morphemic system of language is essential for teachers to understand because it breaks down words into morphemes, the smallest unit of meaning. Morphemes have several categories which teachers use on a daily basis, but may not have understood how they fit into the big picture of language. Understanding bound and unbound morphemes allows for teacher to teach about base words, prefixes, suffixes, and roots. Understanding that function morphemes are the glue or mortar that put content morphemes together allows teachers to show how the syntactic parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, adjectives, etc.) work in real texts. In addition, connective and signal morphemes allow for students to recognize specific words or phrases that give coherence and structure to genres of texts, while employing these signal and connection morphemes in their own writing experiences.

We tend to view the final systems of language, orthographic, graphophonemic, and graphemic, as the most important for beginning literacy students. They are what we spend most of the early years of formal instruction on. Teachers must understand the alphabetic principle governing that 26 letters represent 44 letters, so they can convey that to their students. Knowing this sound-symbol correspondence is the very essence of decoding. The orthographic system is important because it gives students access to patterns that govern the spelling of words. Once students know these patterns exist and start looking of them, they are more able to spell and read new words. The formation of letters, the graphemic system, is important because it is the very foundation of literacy. If students to don’t recognize letters then they cannot read or write entire words.

How Language Systems Support Young Children’s Literacy

Teachers working with young children must have a clear understanding of the systems of language, so they can help their students create a good foundation that will lead to becoming expert readers and writers. As I already stated, young children are greatly exposed to morphemic, graphophonemic, and grapheme systems. Common activities such as creating words with affixes and roots, breaking words into onsets and rimes, and practicing letter recognition all prepare these students for more complex aspects of using language. Teachers need to model appropriate syntax and semantic structures for their early childhood students in the form of shared writings. Young students can be exposed to various text structures, genres, and types through read-alouds or self-selected books. These stories, articles, and poems can become mentor texts for students to create a variety of writings. To help students understand the various context and functions of language, teachers can provide them opportunities to produce advertisements (instrumental), directions (regulatory), cards (interactional), experiments (heuristic), and newspaper articles (informative). Sadly, some young children are only exposed to imaginative and personal writing in the early grades which is not realistic for what they will experience in higher grades or as a professional adult.

Response to Language Variation

Language variation is a part of everyday life. Every person is bidialectal in some aspect. The way I speak to my students in my classroom is much different than the way I speak to my friends.  I code-switch depending on the context and the audience. In my classroom, I try to create an accepting and open community that treats everyone with respect. This allows for differences of speech, writing, and reading to exist without stigmas. I try not to correct a student’s use of nonstandard English while they are speaking or reading. In writing, I do correct it if we are in a one-on-one situation, so the child will not be embarrassed. Usually if I read the use of nonstandard dialect out loud from students’ writing, they notice that it is not standard and correct it themselves without prompting. Meaning is the ultimate goal I strive for.

I also like to use books where the characters have dialects. We listen to the audio version of The Cay by Theodore Taylor, in which Timothy has a Caribbean island dialect. At first the students have trouble understanding his meaning, but eventually they understand how his surface structure connects to his meaning. We also read The BFG by Roald Dahl. This book has English words they think are misspelled or they have never heard of, as well as the giants have a dialect all their own. Both of these books, help to make dialect acceptable and a normal part of life!

Revised Definition of What It Means to Know a Word

Knowing words is three-fold: the concept of the word, the oral expression of the word, and the written form of the word all must be known. It is not enough for a child to display two of three characteristics; they must exhibit all three to have a basic knowledge of the word. Kucer suggests that even though these three things must be in place, there still may be more criteria such as connectedness that determine true word knowledge. 

Revised Definition of Text

I think my original definition of what text is was partially correct, yet missing some key components. I was correct in stating that the purpose of text is to gain or construct meaning. I recognized that text can be multimodal and go beyond the purely linguistic. In today’s world, linguistic text is partnered with photos, charts, videos, instant messaging, and hyperlinks. One thing I did not recognize was that text must be part of a larger whole. Because of this feature, text can be considered discourse because text is continuous, connected bits of language that understood by a certain group.  For a text to be meaningful, it must be found in a logical context (externally coherence). Within the text, the systems of language must work together to make it internally coherent and understandable by the reader/viewer/observer.

Relationship between Kucer and Silverman & Hartranft 

One similarity between these two readings is they both discussed the context of language. S&H’s focused on the difference between contextualized and decontextualized language. We know that simple, concrete, cued contextualized language is what most young children are familiar with, but for students to be academically successful, they must develop the more abstract and complex decontextualized language. Kucer focused on how the systems of language are contextualized with internal context being determined by semantics, syntax, and morphemes while external context is determined by situation and communicative register. I liked how S&H pointed out how the systems of language, which were extensively covered in Kucer’s book, create depth of vocabulary. Each book commented on the fact that ELL or dialect speaking students must become competent code-switchers between vernacular language to academic language. The ability to have depth and breadth of academic discourse is paramount to success in the upper grades and future schooling. Teachers who explicitly teach vocabulary are helping their students, but the most effective vocabulary instruction is individualized.

Discussion Questions:

1. Should assessment we give as teachers require student so maintain a high-integrity stance about texts or low-integrity stance about texts? (Kucer pg. 31) Is the idea of intertextuality obsolete in a Common Core-moving education climate?

2. After reading Ch. 2 of Kucer, is there one activity, lesson, or unit you do or have done in your classroom that ties directly to one of the systems of language? Tell about that experience. 

3. How do you teach academic vocabulary in your classroom? Does it contribute to vocabulary breadth or vocabulary depth? How do you go beyond simple fast mapping to extended mapping?