LANGUAGE
ACROSS
THE CURRICULUM-BEd Notes
Unit 2 – Understanding language across the curriculum
Prepared by
Sabarish P
Contents
Teacher in the global context: Linguistic skills for professional communication in worldwide classrooms
Linguistic Skills for communication
Teacher’s – Professional communication
Role of teacher in an ICT enabled classroom of 21st century
Teacher in the global context: Linguistic skills for professional communication in worldwide classrooms
Economic, social, and technological transformations are linking us in unprecedented ways. Today’s students will need extensive knowledge of the world and the skills and dispositions to engage with people from many cultures and countries. They will need these to be responsible citizens and effective participants in the global marketplace of the 21st century. Few teachers today are well prepared to educate students for this new global context.
Linguistic Skills for communication
Linguistic competence refers to the components of the grammatical competence which includes (phonology, lexicon, morphology, and syntax) that are incarnated in the basic four skills of English language which are: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Linguistic Competence refers to the ability to use the language code or system itself and all its component parts. The language code in English can be divided into:
Grammar
Phonology
Lexis
Graphology
Grammar consists basically of syntax (word order) and morphology (the composition of words as developed from a root forms, e.g. prefixes, suffixes and regular plural forms). Morphological units are called morphemes (smallest grammatical unit in a language).
Phonology, consists of the pronunciation of vowels and consonants in their linguistic environment, word stress, sentence stress, pitch and intonation. Phonological units are called phonemes.
Lexis (vocabulary), also includes multi-word combinations which have their own specific meanings, e.g., 'take off', 'by the way'. We also include words that are frequently found together, e.g., ‘a nice day’, ‘strong coffee’.
Graphology, is spelling and punctuation, in fact the written equivalent of phonology.
Teacher’s – Professional communication
Teachers need subject-specific and curricular knowledge, pedagogical and classroom management skills, and contextual awareness and understanding of their students. In the classroom, teachers use language both as a medium for and object of instruction. They require language skills that include knowledge of the structures and functions of language, as well as fluency (in speaking, writing, listening, and reading), and the ability to teach these same skills to their students.
Teachers must be able to modulate their use of language to accommodate the diverse levels of language proficiency their students bring to the classroom. Teachers require a good command of two language registers: the formal academic language of schooling and informal language that allows for effective communication and personal connections with students, parents, and colleagues. Teachers must also have mastery of the four language modalities: speaking, reading, writing, and listening.
Teachers play many different roles within and outside of the classroom. Their roles in the classroom include instructor, evaluator, manager, communicator, and model of academic language and culture. Outside of the classroom, they communicate with parents and members of a professional community. Each role and situation requires a different set of language competencies.
Teachers as Instructors
Teachers are responsible for instructing the topics and concepts prescribed in the curriculum. Regardless of their specific teaching assignments, teachers use language to provide instruction. They use a variety of language patterns, including presentations, discussions, demonstrations, modelling, questioning, thinking aloud, feeding back, and checking for understanding (Holbein & Harkins, 2010; Mariage et al., 2000).
Teachers as Evaluators
Teachers evaluate student progress, making judgments about student performance and learning (Green, 1983). To assess student learning, teachers use language patterns such as questioning and prompting of student responses to gather information about student understanding of the topics or concepts. Teachers also use written tasks to assess student learning. They provide verbal andwritten feedback to students about what they have and have not learned (Fillmore & Snow, 2000).
Teachers as Managers
Teaching is a creative process of managing environments, activities, and situations so students can master the academic and social content of schooling (Green, 1983). As classroom managers, teachers identify and implement strategies to achieve a variety of instructional and social goals. Specifically, teachers determine appropriate levels of participation (class, group, and individual (Green, 1983). To manage classroom interactions and activities, teachers use a number of instructional strategies such as facilitating, sharing ownership, and scaffolding (Holbein & Harkins, 2010). Furthermore, teachers use language to involve individual students in class discussions (e.g., repeating, directly calling). The classroom disciplinary climate can either foster or impede positive outcomes of learning activities. Thus, teachers must establish a classroom disciplinary climate in which teaching and learning are unimpeded by disruptive behaviour.
In short, teachers must simultaneously manage the learning activities and disciplinary aspects of every lesson (Green, 1983). To achieve this balance, teachers use language patterns such as
issuing directives and warnings;
signalling approval or disapproval;
explaining classroom procedures;
describing the prescribed step-wise progress through learning activities;
asking questions to check on progress through tasks;
rephrasing or simplifying instructions;
repeating and paraphrasing;
providing feedback; and
directing (and redirecting) attention to the task at hand (Elder, 2003; Holbein & Harkins, 2010).
Teachers as Communicators
To be effective communicators, teachers need to have a working knowledge of language forms, structures, and rules. They must be able to adjust their use of language in response to the language proficiency and background of individual students (Fillmore & Snow, 2000). A teacher’s use of language is not confined to the classroom or to interactions with students. Teachers should be able to communicate with parents, administrators, other professionals, and community members in a variety of ways. For example, teachers are expected to communicate with their colleagues and administrators by providing oral and written reports. Teachers need to be able to communicate with parents to build relationships with them, to report progress, and to elicit important information that will help the teacher support and instruct students (McNaughton et al., 2008).
To build effective communication with parents, teachers need to master several communication competencies such as
listening,
empathizing and communicating respect,
making statements that show their understanding of parent concerns,
asking questions,
taking notes of conversations,
summarizing and paraphrasing information obtained from parents, and
describing possible solutions to problems or concerns raised by parents.
Teachers as Models of Academic Language and Culture
Teachers play an important part in cultivating language abilities and dispositions appropriate for formal learning. In linguistically plural societies such as India, where many of the students are learning the language of instruction for the first time, teachers are sometimes the only models of language use in formal learning contexts.
A second responsibility teachers share is acculturating students for scholastic success. Schools are the only institution that systematically and universally cultivates facility in the use of language, achievement motivation, attentiveness, personal organization, self-direction, self-confidence in learning, and the capacity to learn for intrinsic satisfaction rather than extrinsic interest.
Teachers as Members of a Professional Community
To provide effective instruction to students, teachers need to participate in various professional development activities, communicate with their colleagues, and examine professional literature (Elder, 2003). Professional development activities (e.g., attending professional development workshops, reading books, watching or listening to on-line podcasts, and reviewing instructional manuals) require teachers to possess a specialized pedagogical vocabulary in order to make sense of new pedagogical concepts, and map that vocabulary onto their own professional roles and teaching experiences (Macken-Horarik et al., 2006).
Role of teacher in an ICT enabled classroom of 21st century
The process of education has changed its traditional outlook and shifted itself from the chalk and talk method to strategies utilizing innovations in the field of educational technology. The traditional classrooms both in infrastructure and in the teaching-learning process have transformed to ICT enabled classrooms. The 21st century education demands both from the teacher and the taught to be transformed in innovative ways in order to cater the needs and aspirations of new generation learners. Here is an attempt to substantiate the role of teacher in the 21st century teaching-learning process in the classroom.
In the present context of teaching , if the teacher could only provide his/her pupils the content, facts, dates, formulas, concepts, theories, stories and information, then the role in the lives of our students is obsolete. Today the students can find information on anything, anytime, anywhere using blogs, facebook, cell phones, twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, iPods, google etc; . There is virtually limitless information on whatever, whenever and wherever. The teacher is no longer the main source of knowledge.
Then what does it mean to teach in the 21st century? The modern education aims at preparing every child for life equipping them with life skills, enabling them to resolve their day today problems through effective decision making. The teacher could help the students help to learn by themselves through handling the resources available today from various sources by acting as a filter. The teacher must be scaffolding the students how to use, validate, synthesize, leverage, and communicate the information and also to collaborate with it and solve problems using relevant information.
Prepared by
Sabarish P
