Tea Party

The only issue that I have with Linda’s article is that she claims “white” linguistics are/is the only thing that is oppressing people of color. Beth made a good point in class that there are other dialects that are dominant in our society. I understand that she is trying to include people of different cultures but I am curious to know what she stands on when it comes to equity vs. equality. Equity is giving people the necessary tools for everyone to have the same opportunity and equality can SOMETIMES be limiting and excluding. I am not saying that I believe “whitewashing” is not a thing or an issue but if she is trying to reach some incorporative community she should not exclude her students who may identify with “whitewash” style of discourse or make them feel guilty. [complex sentence with a relative clause]I realize I am going out on a limb here and that not everyone who reads this blog will agree with my views, but that was one of my responses to her blog. Setting that aside however, I did like the tea party exercise because there are so many different languages out there that students may not even know exist. I felt that exercise was a good introduction into the fact that there are so many other languages than just the mainstream popular ones. By recognizing that you may align with dominant language and its practices will help you be able to avoid or better incorporate other language practices. However it is not entirely a bad thing to teach along those boundaries because when students are put out into the real world they may find themselves in a position where they will have to understand the dominant language and its practices and the person on the other end may not be so willing to mold themselves to their language style. Specifically a challenge for me is I do align with what would be considered the dominant discourse. But knowing this I am able to be set in my own self-identity. Culturally responsive teaching starts with knowing who you are and being firm in your beliefs. Because of this I believe I will be able to respect and have a curiosity for other language discourses allowing me to incorporate some of those non-traditional practices into my classroom activities. This article really helps set into stone my design concept for my classroom. I want my classroom to be decorated by my students and show my students growth, personalities, and atmosphere. By incorporating different language practices my classroom will hopefully show the diversity within my students. The influence her article holds over my research idea is still forming. But I have an idea of what I want my research article to accomplish. I want to discover a way where comingling languages proves to be more beneficial or enhancing than by being dominant in one area.

I tend to use relative clauses a lot in my writing but I am not sure if I using them correctly specifically when it comes to my complex sentences 

Crovitz

Crovitz makes a point that in order to understand where one is going wrong in their grammar, you must be able to understand the thought process behind the mistake. Because even when something looks wrong to you, in that students culture it could be correct and they just do not know the difference. And by understanding the thought process behind it you can better help them understand their mistake [FANBOY]. I also agree with his statement that standardized testing can lead teachers into doing repetitive drills for grammar rather than teaching them how grammar works in context. Just because a student will be able to recognize the fault in a sentence they have seen thousands of times; doesn't mean they will be able to recognize the same mistake when it comes to multiple variations of sentences. Not only will they not be able to catch a mistake in other types of sentences, I fear that they will not be able to recognize when a sentence is using a specific punctuation correctly in a way that they were taught before. I really liked the alternative of creating more complex sentences from basic sentences. I like this idea because I think that it will help solve to a degree the problem I just stated previously. Because basic sentences are just not a reality, when reading Mary Shelley for example her sentences are all over the place. 

*I have been suffering from the flu all weekend so this is as about as good as this blog post will, get I am very sorry to whomever has to read this. I just cannot think clearly right now*

Sentence Diagramming

This was my first time of ever seeing grammar taught through a visual; other than the human sentences we did in class. The only other visual that I have ever had was just my teacher (or myself) [an aside set off by parentheses] [reflexive pronoun to show emphasis] labeling the parts of my sentences with acronyms so I knew what each part of the sentence was. And honestly besides being able identify what a specific word was in a sentence; we never looked at sentence structure in depth. When I saw the visual in the book of the diagram I was very confused. Which made me immediately recognize a shortcoming with the method: it is probably only successful when taught in person and showed through example. Because just reading it to me was very confusing and I became lost. I feel as if that visual for teaching grammar would be best suited for older students, not so much students who are just starting out early in the writing process. I am also confused on how sentence diagramming can be used as collaborative projects and used for debates. The human sentences showed me that there are multiple ways to set up a sentence with all the different verbs and adjectives and pronouns [list without final “and” or with all “ands” and no commas]. Bur it also showed me that there was pretty much a common medium of the sentence structure that everyone agreed on and thought sounded best. So when trying to turn the sentence diagramming into a debate I do not feel like it would work because at the high school level their sentences are all basically the same without much variety. I mean it could be a way to induce variety. I guess I am just not a fan of this particular method.

I THINK I used a reflexive pronoun (I know it is a reflexive pronoun but is it in the way I put it in my sentence I am unsure) in parenthesis to tell the reader that my teachers where mainly the ones who were pointing out grammar to me; but as time went on I began to add in my input or recognize grammar just a little. I used the parenthesis because when I tried it with the dash it was too much of an emphasis on something that was merely just a side note not something that I wanted the reader to be drawn too. I also used the listing method with all ands. I decided to do this because it did draw attention to the fact that I was saying there are multiple/many ways to create a sentence. So by adding in the “ands” it emphasized the continuation of something going on for a long time. I really liked the way that I used the listing method with ands in my paragraph and thought that it made the paragraph flow nicely.