Christensen Tea Party Article

            After reading Christensen’s article, I became extremely irritated with the concept of teachers whitewashing students (complex sentence: dependent clause first, followed by a comma and the independent clause to emphasize my irritation with whitewashing). The idea that it is the teacher’s job to whitewash the students especially annoyed me. Purposely wanting to diminish another’s culture is extremely unfair and insensitive to the people within the culture. Another component in the article that rubbed me the wrong way was when Christensen stated Spanish speaking has been banned from classrooms across the country. I never even realized this was an issue or was so common in many states. Christensen completely understands my perspective regarding me not noticing the power standard language has. I would not say it was invisible to me like she said in the article, although I was not as aware of the power of language until after reading the article. Something I was really curious about in the article and something I felt was left sort of foggy, was her comment about needing to teach students why some languages have power and others do not.

            The Tea party activity we did in class was far more communicative about the issues in the article. I felt like when I was just reading about the tea party in the article I did not see the importance as much as I did when we actually interacted as the people in class. When we actually interacted as the people I felt as if my classmates and myself were more aware of the struggles each individual faced throughout their lives. It truly was touching: hearing stories of the traumatic experiences people endured, and also the uplifting stories of people persevering (what follows the colon both describes the trauma the people experienced as well as the strength people embodied). I felt as if everyone was very sensitive and respectful regarding the stories, which made the experience that much more insightful.

            I feel as if one way teachers can be more cautious of the dominant language occurring in classrooms, is by being accepting of students who do have another language that is their first language. An idea I have as a teacher, is when I find out a student does have another language as their first language; I will set up a meeting with that individual. Within this meeting the student and I would create an understanding regarding the language in order to be on the same page and show the student I respect he or she and will do whatever I can to make sure the classroom environment will be as respectful as possible. A challenge, which I feel would be common to have occurred in the classroom, is when students begin to bully another student whose first language is not English. This occurred in my classroom once during my high school experience and my teacher has a conversation with us all and asked how our ancestors who came to America for the first time felt. Then she went on saying that everyone has the ability to be judged because of his or her culture and language, and to respect others the way you would want to be treated. My teacher was a very respected teacher, and I felt as if the students really listened to her after this discussion occurred. I really want to teach an open to discussion-based class. I feel like great ideas and thoughts come from discussion as long as it is in a controlled and respectful environment.

            When researching scenarios and languages, which have experienced this type of scrutiny, I want to really dive into the struggles a specific language has endured. I specifically want to research Pidgin. My family has been vacationing in Hawaii for as long as I can remember and I want to really delve into their culture. Gaining insight about the language of Pidgin would be ideal for this project. Regarding this blog, I felt as if this was the hardest set of patterns to accomplish and work into my writing. I really had to think about where I wanted to place some of the patterns of the week and am not sure how well I incorporated the patterns into my writing, but I tried! I would love to know opinions about whether or not I succeeded so that way I could fix what is not working in my writing.

Sudden Possibilities

            The Error Analysis concept discussed in the “Sudden Possibilities” article immediately describes that Error Analysis was once a way for teachers and society to label someone with a learning deficiency. Although this is ridiculous, teachers today are still judging students. [rhetorical fragment beginning with a coordinating conjunction; used to emphasize my exhaustion] I think it is a great point to address that teachers are often judging student’s writing based upon surface level errors that serve as an annoyance to the teacher. This annoyance can lead to students only focusing on being grammatically correct when writing. I find it very frustrating that teachers can be more concerned with the correctness of how a student is writing, instead of the content at which the student is writing about. I agree 100% with the article stating that error anlaysis must extend much further than having the inability to memorize a rule and then incorporate what they memorized into their writing. Error Analysis should see deeper into the writing and place more corrections upon the content. Having the ability to understand the mistakes the student is making, but then helping them comprehend their mistake is much more valuable. [compound sentence joined with a comma+FANBOYS/Coordinating Conjunction].

            I do not recall experimenting with DOL in my schooling, but I am certainly glad I did not have to do exercises of this sort. [compound sentence joined with a comma+FANBOYS/Coordinating Conjunction]. Examining sentences could be beneficial at some points in schooling, although I do not think correcting sentences consistently is the best way for students to comprehend and understand mistakes made within writing. Beginning a class with the same kind of exercise every day is not beneficial to teaching students about mistakes in writing. Having the same exercise every single day seems to be very excessive in my opinion. It is understandable that teachers would go to these lengths in order to compensate for standardized testing. The pressure of knowing students will have to know how to correct sentences in order to score well on the test is enough stress to make a teacher force these same exercises upon their students daily. Instead of teaching DOL exercises incessantly, I think it would be more beneficial for students to be able to participate in an interactive exercise to help them further understand the subject matter.

            A way in which this can be done and incorporated into a classroom is by using the alternatives to typical daily language exercises. The exercise I have chosen to discuss is exercise 8. Exercise 8 is explained as using slogans from advertisements in the classroom as an example of incorrect spelling and grammar that is used in an interesting way based upon advertisements. I think this would be an extremely beneficial alternative to use in the classroom to help students understand grammar usage better and in a more interactive way. I would choose to use this alternative in my class because it proves to have relevance to student’s lives. Especially if this is being used in a high school classroom, students will find it easier to relate to and understand. By using this activity in my class, I would hope this would enable students to be more aware of advertisements in society. Overall, I would hope to accomplish the goal of students acknowledging the difference in grammar when it is used in marketing and advertising scenarios.

            I chose to experiment with the “fanboys” pattern of the week, because I do use fanboys in my writing but its never intentional, its natural, and I wanted to try using it intentionally. Because of the fact that I tried to use fanboys purposely, I feel as if I did not use it correctly. I attempted to try the pattern out twice and I still am not sure if I properly incorporated the pattern into my sentence. I also wanted to incorporate using a rhetorical fragment at the beginning of a sentence. I often do this in my writing and caught myself starting my sentence with “Although” without trying to, so I formed my sentence around “Although” in order to incorporate the use of the pattern of the week. I enjoyed these weeks patterns because I already use these patterns in my everyday writing, so it made it fun to be able to use a pattern that I have some prior knowledge about.

Blog 3 Pages 75-79 Diagramming Sentences

            Throughout my schooling, I have never worked with diagramming or experienced anything similar to it first hand. To be honest I did not even know there was a visual component to grammar such as diagramming. I had the same teacher all four years of high school and my teacher herself did not explain grammar in anyway similar to diagramming. [Reflexive pronoun to show emphasis. I wanted to emphasize the matter in which I had the same teacher for a long period of time and diagramming was never brought to my attention] I think it is really interesting there is a format for reading and writing grammar in order to improve accuracy.

            Diagramming looks very confusing to me. There are so many different symbols that are meant to identify the different components of grammar. I am sure once I am more informed about what symbol goes with which function of grammar it will make more sense. Although for now, I am confused. Ultimately, I began to learn sentence structuring with grammar very easily when we did the sentence building in class on Tuesday February 3^rd. I tend to learn better when I am experiencing the learning first hand. Instead of just being given a pattern or equation and myself learning the information straight off of a piece of paper. [Reflexive pronoun to show emphasis. I wanted to bring emphasis to my frustration with being given something and being expected to learn it almost immediately] I have never been a student who excelled in math. Equations always overwhelmed me. I was never a comfortable, confident, strong student in regards to math, which is why I am sort of fearful of learning the ropes of diagramming. [List without final and. I wanted to list the qualities in which I lacked in regards to mathematics] It looks quite like math to me!

            I am expecting to struggle with diagramming once we begin learning and discussing it in class. Although, I did not struggle with the exercise we did in class recently. The interactive way in which we went about constructing sentences was extremely beneficial to my learning. Having the ability to be an active learner in the process really clicked with my brain and the way I learn and process information. I do believe once I begin to learn and understand components of diagramming, I will see how it could be beneficial to have symbols representing the different concepts of grammar. Diagramming seems to have a specific technique in which it follows, which could be extremely helpful for someone who struggles when it comes to constructing proper sentences.

            Overall, I am very apprehensive about diagramming. I am very willing to try and experiment with it, just like I have been with all of the components of grammar we have learned this semester.  Diagramming definitely has some shortcomings in regards to learning the functions and everything through a specific system—instead of interactively.  It does provide room for success for students learning grammar because it may be helpful to follow a precise format when constructing sentences. It could prove to be a very helpful resource in the long run. Diagramming is something I have never been introduced to, but am totally willing to experiment with in order to improver my grammar skills.