What Teachers Need to Know About Language

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What Teachers Need to Know About Language

• Fillmore Snow (2000) ERIC ED308705

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Teacher as

• Communicator
• Educator
• Evaluator
• Educated Human Being
• Agent of Socialization

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Oral Language

• 1. What are the basic units of language?
• 2. What is regular and what isnt?
• 3. How is the lexicon acquired and structured?
• 4. Are vernacular dialects different from bad
  English and if so, how?
• 5. What is academic English?
• 6. Why has the acquisition of English by
  non-English-speaking children not been more
  universally successful?

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Written Language

• 7. Why is English spelling so complicated?
• 8. Why do students have trouble with structuring
  narrative and expository writing?
• 9. How should one judge the quality and
  correctness of a piece of writing?
• 10. What makes a sentence or a text easy or
  difficult to understand?

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Oral Language Development
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What are the basic units of language?
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2. What is regular and what isnt?
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3. How is the lexicon acquired and structured?
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4. Are vernacular dialects different from bad
English and if so, how?
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5. What is academic English?
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6. Why has the acquisition of English by
non-English-speaking children not been more
universally successful?
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Written Language Development
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7. Why is English spelling so complicated?

• Variation blood is good food
• No Language Academy prescriptive
• Deep orthography complex spellings, irregular
  words
• Etymological
• Ph /f/
• Y /ai/

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8. Why do students have trouble with structuring
narrative and expository writing?

• NARRATIVE Mimic, learned, discourse strategy
  (sequence)
• Latino emphasizes personal relationship more
  than plot
• Japanese terse, not recounting all events
• AAVE end of the story is often the beginning
• Expository forming, arguing, precise, present
  facts

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9. How should one judge the quality and
correctness of a piece of writing?

• We as educators lack grounding in grammar
• Teach students to polish
• Understand structure
• Discuss structure
• Explicitly teach how to write effectively

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10. What makes a sentence or a text easy or
difficult to understand?

• Simple text bullets
• More coherent texts flow
• Relevant
• Coherence
• Naturalness
• Grace
• Informativeness

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What Teachers Need to Know About Language

• Fillmore Snow (2000) ERIC ED308705

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