Language and Culture in a Diverse World and Cathy the Queen of Cats

Language and Culture in a Diverse World

Culture is expressed in different ways. One expression of culture is language. “Learning language goes hand in hand with learning culture,” (Hurtado de Vivas, 2011, pg. 220).

Besides being aware of and respectful of a student’s culture how can one’s culture effect how they have learned language? The example in the book gave an example of a potential affective association of having to choose between one’s culture and another’s culture. The example was one of an instructor not knowing that the child was being respectful and trying to fulfill their parents’ cultural expectations. I wonder how often this happens? “It is evident that language, literacy, and culture are linked in many ways; educators need to become knowledgeable concerning the impact that these factors affect students leaning and their lives” (Hurtado de Vivas, 2011, pg. 220).

I hope to find the factors that impact a student’s learning and their lives.   

http://coe.k-state.edu/about/download/profdev/Perez_Diversity2.pdf 

Language: A Historical Overview

Immigration in the early 1800s was diverse. Immigrants settled in isolated farming communities and were not viewed as threatening. With the influx of more immigrants in the latter 1800s to cities, the rise of nationalism, and the realities of two World Wars there was a need to Americanize the population. (This was true earlier with the American Indians.) By 1950s the realization of the economic gains, the need for positive international relationships, status, power, and national security federal resources were granted to teach foreign languages. By 1968 influenced by the civil rights movement bilingual education was found in 13 states. 1975 saw the establishment of the National Association for Bilingual Education (NA BE). Just as with the nation’s attitudes about immigration and immigrants change so have the attitudes concerning bilingual education. Where it is not a sink or swim program, bilingual education is no longer funded federally and under No Child Left Behind ELL or second language learners SLL are to be included in the need for yearly progress. NCLB give an English Language Learner 3 years to become proficient research shows 5 years is what is needed for an ELL to become academically proficient (cognitive academic language proficiency--CALP ).  Because students are now placed in main stream classrooms too soon teachers need to be aware of students who are linguistically diverse and those that are linguistically disabled. 

Second Language Acquisition

Research shows that the skills that a student has in their native language can be transferred to their second language, and that learning can take place in their native language and transferred to the dominant culture’s language 

Thomas and Collier (1997) developed the Prism Model. It has four fascist; linguistic, academic, cognitive, and sociocultural.       

 http://coe.k-state.edu/about/download/profdev/Perez_Diversity2.pdf

The Prism model has at its center the teachers sensitivity to the ELL's culture and needs so as to establish a relationship and teach within that culturally sensitive relationship. (It does not cause the student to associate the loss of their family's culture with learning. The learner can discover knowledge at school without compromising their relationship to their family or themselves.)

Basic communication skills (BICS) can be developed within as little as 2 years, but cognitive academic language proficiency  (CALP) can take as long as 5 to 7 years to develop. 

Krashen believes that a second language is learned the same way that a first language is through group activities, classroom discussions, and cultural activities to create and strengthen bonds between students ( Hurtado de Vivas,  pg. 223). Krashen believes that direct instruction is not how learners learn a new language, but they learn it when they understand it.

Krashen's filter is also affectively based  as it hypothesizes that learners aquire a new language better when there are low levels of anxiety compared to when there is high stress and acquisition is low. 

(Isn't that with most learning? Don't we learn better, create better when we don't feel too much judgement or pressure? Don't we learn better when it is the process that is emphasized and the right answer?)

Krashen thinks that it is the quality not the quantity of English that effects how much a learner will learn. It must be understandable for it to be learned. 

Short and Echevarria (2005) have a research based validated instruction model consisting of eight interrelated components to make content understandable to ELLs and to promote academic vocabulary. Teachers need to understand the needs of ELLS and provide sheltered instruction to help with language development. 

• slower speech
• clear enunciation 
• use visuals and demonstration
• targeted vocabulary development (which means what?) 
• connection to student experiences 
• use of supplementary materials 
• other strategies include cooperative learning, instructional conversations, multisensory instruction, and guided reading strategies because they provide opportunities for listening and discussing content
• print rich environment 
• multisensory input
• vocabualry
• role playing
• allowing time for reading and writing for curiosity and authentic purposes 
• coral reading
• books with tape s
• multicultural literature  
• language experience approach 
• total physical response 
• narrow reading 
• reading aloud 
• interactive writing with texts that support cultural awareness and instructional objectives

(Samina would like all of these. It is as if good practices for reading and learning are good practices for ELL. This Whole Chapter is almost a summary of English Language Learner Class ).  

DeCapua (2007) SIFE--Students with interrupted formal education need visuals, charts, graphs, time lines, and Venn diagrams, collaborative learning activities (task-oriented projects and small-group activities to replace traditional mote taking and worksheet assignments.  Good school / teacher family relationships are stressed

Culture

Culture is linked to food, holidays, folklore, sometimes to communication style, attitudes, values and family relationships . But Culture is also alive, a process, and is situated historically and socially contextualized. Culture is a system that has social stratification and tensions. (I once had a teacher that said people were like birds as they liked and collected shinny objects and were hierarchical).

    

Darder (1991) thinks that there are four main classifications of culture which overlap throughout the research (!!!)of the meaning of culture.(The definition of culture is researched--I never thought of it that way. I always thought of it  as what one absorbs when young and learns as one becomes older from one's social environment.)

Each culture bases its rules and traditions on the four classifications of

1. cultural values or value orientation 

2. heritage and cultural artifacts

3. language

4. cognitive styles 

Dominant culture versus subordinate culture

The dominate culture refers to ideologies, social practices, and structures that affirm the central values, interest, and concerns of those who are in control of material and symbolic wealth 

and 

The subordinate culture are groups who exist in social and material subordination to the dominant. 

 

In this section of the book it is so watered down that it is difficult to understand. What are the implicit rules of power that are sited? I think that she means by implicit rules is that minority students should be exposed to the curriculum in the same manner as the dominant culture, as not to do so is placing the minority learners at a disadvantage. Can this also be seen as the need for multicultural material to be built into the curriculum--I think so because as a minority in society one needs to define oneself in a positive manner and that maybe just as if not more important than being indoctrinated into the dominant culture.  

Whereas historically one was educated in school through ones culture and language it did not affect how successful they were because people were generally "successful" if we were born into the dominate culture (culture-protestant, white and Anglo-saxon or not and the successful if not born into the dominant culture ). Now while education wants to acknowledge the cultures of others so as to educate them it also wants to standardize what is learned to support the dominant culture. It's a tricky wire to walk. 

Culture is a powerful thing. When governments, communities, schools, and teachers do not acknowledge their power and their ignorance of their students' cultures they do more than a disservice to them; they can cause education to be associated with them being less than who and what they are.

Cathy 
Queen of Cats by Sandra Cisneros  
"You want to be my friend, she says. Okay, I'll be your friend. 
but only till next Tuesday. That's when we move away. Got to!
then as if she forgot I just moved in, she says the neighborhood is getting bad." 

After thinking about this chapter for a week and discussing it in class I have come to the conclusion that academics writing is not considerate writing. Yes, we learn within the context of our culture, which includes our language. Yes, if we find ourselves in a classroom that does not value us as a person we will have negative associations with that class, subject, school, or  heaven forbid, learning in general. "Learning takes place within a relationship," is something I heard Scot Rose  say and it makes a lot of sense. Maybe it is generally clouded in the language of academia because it is not always the norm in our culture.  Americans say that they value individuality, but only in the context of success.  Americans value the ends not the means. We unintentionally impose our "views" on students all the time through the invisibility of cultural norms.  We are so focused on accountability and who to lay the blame on that we forget that it truly is in the nature of humans to learn and to teach. We need to take into account the whole person. Is it difficult to meet students' needs? Yes! but if we don't we can lose them. We can generally teach students to follow directions and do what they are told, but we want to teach students how to navigate the world and find their ways. To do this we need to do more than create obedient or disobedient children. Knowledge is only relevant to the individual if it awakens something in that  individual because then they see the value of the knowledge (it is more than just being smart or not or passing a test or not). Enough said. 

What maybe most helpful from this blog post is the link above because it applies a sociocultural model reminding us that we must first consider the  learner in their own context. Next we can look at their language development in reference to literacy domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. While looking at those domains consider graphophomic, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic systems and their complexity. Then it is useful to take not of the differences between BICS  and CALP and not use social language as a determiner of academic language  and how to address those two needs. And to return to the original point of this chapter being an inconsiderate text--why can't its ideas, which are  important and raise many issues, be clearly stated? Are these ideas to be buried in vague text or in straight forward words?