Bad grammar and metalinguistic awareness in the age of social media

Traditionally, written language is associated with time for planning, revising, and editing, resulting in texts with a clear beginning, middle, and end, also using complete sentences. However, the arrival of digital media has blurred the distinction between spoken and written language, and in industrial countries writing has overtaken reading as the basis of speakers’ daily experience of literacy (Brandt 2015). This does not mean that the traditional patterns of writing have become more entrenched. Digital media have brought about a new kind of writing, writing that is medially written, conceptually oral, and technically digital, employing non-verbal strategies to mark topics (e.g., with hashtags) or express stance (e.g., through icons with names like “shruggie”). Even though empirical studies have shown that extensive texting may actually contribute to children’s awareness of syntactic structures and overall literacy, many people, especially educators, are concerned that the use of “netspeak” or “text speak”, with its many abbreviations, unconventional spelling, and reliance on emojis, will affect speakers’ ability to craft complex arguments and will make the notion of “proper grammar” obsolete. The video “Word Crimes” (by “Weird Al” Yankovic), which suggests that speakers who can’t write “the proper way” deserve to be mocked, has been watched over 35 million times. People are as interested in what counts as “bad grammar” as ever, but linguists usually brush off the subject as irrelevant, trotting out the same old examples with a high density of modifiers and few markers of interpersonal discourse.

(Available: https://biclce2017.files.wordpress.com. Anja Wanner. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Adapted.)

Cultural Linguistic Pluralism and the Problem of Motivation

The knowledge of Standard English is necessary to function successfully in our society; and if Standard English is freed from its unjustified association with ‘Anglo speech’ and ‘white man’s talk’ and is merely considered a standardized tool of communication, no harm can possibly be inflicted to the learner’s selfimage nor can its enforcement be considered a construct of white racism. The acquisition of Standard English by all Americans is ultimately a problem of motivation. A person can, however, not be motivated properly to learn Standard English unless he conceives of America as a pluralistic society whose members, though culturally and linguistically different, all share a common form of English in addition to whatever language or dialect they may have been born into. When American society is redefined in this way, it is no longer difficult to motivate a student, regardless of his cultural, social, or linguistic background, to learn the dialect that is shared by all.

(Published By: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Available: https://www.jstor.org.)

Latin America must be supported in efforts towards greater education quality

Great strides have been made in the past two decades in access to education throughout Latin America, but the majority of children in the region are still not receiving a high-quality and relevant education. As a result, too many Latin American youth entering the labor force lack the skills necessary to find dignified work and participate in an increasingly competitive, information-rich and globalized economy. At the same time, employers cannot find enough qualified people to fill open positions. This profound human resource mismatch is suppressing economic growth and perpetuating a system of haves and have-nots. Unequal societies are less efficient at converting growth into poverty reduction. In Latin America, the education gap mirrors the income gap existing between rich and poor.

Latin America is falling behind other regions of the world with respect to years of school and quality of schooling. In 2015, Latin America is, on average, 2.5 years of schooling behind the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average. Asian countries, like South Korea, had similar, if not worse, educational levels than many Latin American countries 50 years ago. Approximately 50% of Mexicans, Colombians and Brazilians do not have the skills necessary to solve simple math equations or to explain basic scientific phenomena. This is equivalent to a loss of two years of schooling. In the 2015 PISA exam, the gap widened even further to the equivalent of three years loss in schooling. Perhaps even more surprising, only a tiny sliver (well under 1%) of Latin American students score at the top level of international exams; even Latin America’s high-income students perform below their international peers, not just Latin America’s poor. Less than 0.1% of students in Brazil performed at the highest level in science and Brazil’s performance has remained unchanged since 2006 OECD.

(Available: https://educando.org. PISA, 2015. Adapted.)

Abstract

In the process of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), classroom interaction takes an important place. Teachers need to apply appropriate classroom interaction to facilitate language learning in reality since interaction is in the heart of communication in an era of communicative language teaching. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess teachers’ application of classroom interaction on developing the students’ speaking skills in Tullu Sangota Primary school grade 8. Specifically, the study was intended to assess whether the teacher uses a variety of classroom interactions. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, a descriptive survey method was used and the data were gathered through questionnaires, classroom observation, and interview. Both open-ended and close-ended questionnaires were distributed to the sample students and semi-structured interview questions were employed with sample English teachers. Observation was also held based on checklist and chosen criteria in accordance with the objective of the study. To assess teachers’ application of classroom interaction on developing students speaking skills, 100 sample students from grade 8 and 4 were taken for the study from Tullu Sangota Primary Schools.

The collected data was analyzed using percentage and frequency. Based on the information gathered through the above instruments and its results and discussion, the findings of the study revealed that teachers rarely played their role to develop the students speaking skills in the classroom due to lack of awareness, having negative attitude toward classroom interaction, lack of simple materials to practice classroom interaction, low participation of the students in the class. Based on the implications of the findings, recommendation was made to language teachers, students, Tullu Sangota Primary, Ministry of Education and concerned bodies. Teachers play a prominent role in improving students’ speaking skills, and using appropriate classroom interaction techniques gives students equal chances to participate actively.

Keywords: Interaction; Classroom interaction; Speaking; Language input; Language output; CLT.

(Available: https://www.hilarispublisher.com.)

Classroom pedagogy: Why talk is more important than ever

Talk makes up such an important part of classroom learning. Championing the spoken word can have a huge impact on learning and can help students to comprehend and voice ideas around complex (and simple) topics, furthering their chances of progressing their understanding. Teaching students to develop effective habits of discussion can have a real impact on the clarity and quality of work produced in your class, too.

Something we have lacked during Covid-19 has been that face-to-face dialogue that can encourage rich classroom discussion. Yes, during online teaching there have been elements of discussion, but the quality of these exercises is significantly reduced when students are not in the same room. Some students have not been able to discuss and share ideas in a “normal” way for more than a year. Here are four things to consider when planning effective exercises involving classroom talk:

a) Differentiate between types of talk; it has been a while since students have been able to freely use discussion in the classroom. A lot of online learning has focused on the presenting of ideas in a monologue rather than a dialogue.

b) Build habits of talk; strong habits lead to better quality talk and this in turn translates to more effective learning. However, a lot of children do not have the exposure to talk in their home environments that we might hope for. So exposing students to the different ways in which they can communicate is important for their learning.

c) Use scaffolded resources; providing simple scaffolding for students to support their talk can make discussions and presentation of responses in class more effective. Scaffolding needs to be a key part of any talk task, especially after so much disruption and time away from the classroom.

d) Build a culture of error; one way to coax back that confidence is to create a culture of error in your classroom, “an environment where individuals feel safe making and discussing mistakes, so you can spend less time hunting for errors and more time fixing them”.

(Available: https://www.sec-ed.co.uk. Adam Riches. Adapted.)

Real Men Reveal Their Ordeal

Gareth, 37, from London.

“I was a skinny teen and I hated my body. I saw the covers of Men’s Health and Flex and wanted muscles like those guys, so I started lifting weights. But it wasn’t enough, I began taking steroids; the biggest mistake of my life. I can now tell you, they have rendered my infertility. It’d gone from 13 stone to 21 stone. I was only 21. It took over my life. I couldn’t go on holiday for fear there wouldn’t be a good gym. What I saw in the mirror wasn’t what anyone else saw.”

Sam Rega, 32, from New York.

“I started using dating apps around the time Tinder came out. I had used them about five years before I realised I had a problem. They kept getting more exciting. Each – Hinge, Happon, Lovefluttter – had a new gimmick. I would swipe and it didn’t matter who I was looking at, I wasn’t even reading the profiles. I thought of it as a numbers game. It gave me a psychological boost every time I matched with someone. It was being wanted and I liked that.”

Dan Felton, 29, from Dalston.

“I knew from day one that I wanted to be covered in tattoos. My first tattoo was a big dagger on my calf. It felt like a long time coming. I remember quite vividly the day after it was done, bugging the guys at the shop to do more. I was hooked. Even now when I look in the miror I don’t see someone covered in tattoos, I just see the gaps. Seeing the finished tattoo is the fix, it’s about feeding an urge.”

(Shortlist Magazine, Issue S31. July 26, 2018. Adapted.)

English Language Teaching in Brazil: A Gap in Policy, Problems in Practice

The most important policy document guiding Brazilian education at present is LDB 2015. It mandates the teaching of a foreign language chosen locally from grades 5 to 12 for two 45-, 50-, or 60-minute-periods per week in all basic education. A recent reform has added to LDB 2015 that English will be the foreign language taught in secondary school throughout the country. Previous versions of LDB, however, did not mandate the teaching of English or any other foreign language in basic education, and the problems that are faced in ELT nowadays can be said to date back from the time these laws were passed.

It is worth mentioning that, by 1961, English had already been established as the most commonly taught foreign language in Brazilian schools. The LDB 1961 removed foreign languages from the list of compulsory subjects and that removal of / reduction in English classes led to an increase in the number of private language centres in Brazil as well as to the perception that only in those language centres could students learn the English language. This idea is ingrained in Brazilian society to such an extent until the present day that it becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy even when good conditions for learning seem to be present and is reinforced by important policy documents – PCN-EF and PCN-EM – when they do not establish the conditions that are necessary for the teaching and learning of a foreign language to happen successfully in basic education, but rather attempt to adjust the teaching and learning to whatever the existing conditions are, which can be interpreted as a way to promote the status quo.

Both PCN-EF (Brazil, 1998) and PCN-EM (Brazil, 2000) present progressive ideas about how a foreign language should be taught in the basic education classroom. Such ideas include a social interactionist view of language, which aligns with contemporary research in second language teaching and means a shift from the traditional grammar-translation method largely employed in Brazilian schools in previous decades.

(Available: https://www.researchgate.net. July, 2020. Adapted.)

English Language Teaching in Brazil: A Gap in Policy, Problems in Practice

The most important policy document guiding Brazilian education at present is LDB 2015. It mandates the teaching of a foreign language chosen locally from grades 5 to 12 for two 45-, 50-, or 60-minute-periods per week in all basic education. A recent reform has added to LDB 2015 that English will be the foreign language taught in secondary school throughout the country. Previous versions of LDB, however, did not mandate the teaching of English or any other foreign language in basic education, and the problems that are faced in ELT nowadays can be said to date back from the time these laws were passed.

It is worth mentioning that, by 1961, English had already been established as the most commonly taught foreign language in Brazilian schools. The LDB 1961 removed foreign languages from the list of compulsory subjects and that removal of / reduction in English classes led to an increase in the number of private language centres in Brazil as well as to the perception that only in those language centres could students learn the English language. This idea is ingrained in Brazilian society to such an extent until the present day that it becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy even when good conditions for learning seem to be present and is reinforced by important policy documents – PCN-EF and PCN-EM – when they do not establish the conditions that are necessary for the teaching and learning of a foreign language to happen successfully in basic education, but rather attempt to adjust the teaching and learning to whatever the existing conditions are, which can be interpreted as a way to promote the status quo.

Both PCN-EF (Brazil, 1998) and PCN-EM (Brazil, 2000) present progressive ideas about how a foreign language should be taught in the basic education classroom. Such ideas include a social interactionist view of language, which aligns with contemporary research in second language teaching and means a shift from the traditional grammar-translation method largely employed in Brazilian schools in previous decades.

(Available: https://www.researchgate.net. July, 2020. Adapted.)