Transcript Academic Literacy The Challenges from Oral Language UC

Academic Literacy
The Challenges from Oral Language
UC Davis Institute for Adolescent Literacy, February 6, 2008
Shirley Brice Heath
Stanford University
…verbal interactions ground “enactments of preferred
and expected sentiments, aesthetics, moralities, ideas,
orientation to attend to and engage people and objects,
activities, roles, and paths to knowledge and maturity as
broadly conceived and evaluation by families and other
institutions within a community” (Ochs & Schieffelin,
2008:5).
► enactments
through roles for performance
► orientation to attend
► orientation to engage…people and objects,
activities, roles, and paths to knowledge
Adolescents
and language in everyday life
Young people as leaders in language change
► --Intense
peer (small-range but age-graded)
influence as role models and socializing agents
► --Strong promotion of layered symbol systems
► --Intense usage of language reception as identity
marker
► --Framers of newly layered symbol systems,
including gestural systems, spoken language,
costume, body decoration
Specific oral language change
► --layered
collaborative narratives based on shared
experiences
► --shift in some causal conjunctions to coordinating
roles (e.g. so)
► --lexical “rare” words centred on current youthshared interests
► --redundant usage of “shallow” syntactic
► constructions
Language change (con’t)
► --dominance
of present tense and small-range of
past- or future-tense forms
► --role structures operate within narrow time
frames; rarely linked with academic or vocational
references projected into the future
► --dominance of hypotheticals used as threats or
recast references to past events rather than
future-oriented projections
► --talking more with more of the same
Language
socialization contexts
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--significant drop in dedicated play, planning, or project
time between young and adult or expert
--significant replacement by peer socialization focused on
here and now, commercial, given, high-risk, and occasional
adult-coached rule-governed leisure
--friendship norms close up; identity norms distant and
commercialized, largely mediated through images of
popular-media figures and other commercially-oriented
sources
--social activities peer-governed and peer-assessed
Academic language demands:
► Hypotheticals
of possibility and probability
► “If we do this part first, then that other
thing we have to do, and use that
microscope, could we get the kind of detail
we need? And if we got that better than we
did before, who should be the one to draw
it? I’ll talk about it, but I can’t draw it.”
Comparative or analytical critiques
► “This
new way looks to me like it would take
the other background. Did you think about
that change, or have you tried it and
thought it didn’t work? I just think that the
plain background behind that diagram
makes all that work we did on the drawing
stand out better.”
Step-by-step run-through of accumulated data or
accomplished steps in a process
► “As
we go from 1 to 4 in what you’ve just
said, where will we get? How are we gonna
get to that final thing we said we would do?
Where do we want to end up on this stuff
anyway?”
Future scenario narratives
► “When
we move those chairs to a line-up of
four, then we’ve got to think ahead to when
those have to be on the four corners of the
stage. And is that space we’ll be working in
going to take all that with the full dance
troupe?”
Extended explication
► “We
had to decide that because that other
program wasn’t working the way we
thought it would, and when we tried the
other way, that didn’t work either. So we
went ahead to decide this, and so far, it’s
working.”
Evidence of Later Language Development-- Classroom and Project
60
50
Pecentage usage
40
Samples draw n betw een 1996-2004 from
database of classroom logs collected in the
US(56%)- UK(44%) from approx. 980
classrooms K-12 across subject areas related
to English, Mathematics, and Science.*
30
Samples draw n from project-based learning
situations w ith adult professional(s) from
“creative field” present in UK (2003-2004),
infant school- year 11.
20
10
0
ir realis
conditionals
realis
conditionals
causal
connectives
yes-no
questions
open questions
*Special needs, advanced courses, and special project
sessions not classroom-dependent omitted from
corpus. Selections within talley include only utterances
over ten morphemes; identifiable read-aloud text
materials omitted. Totals will no equal 100% because
some utterances count in more than one category.
Totals include talk drawn from both teachers and
students.
Oral academic language (esp.
sciences and mathematics)
► rare
(or specialized) vocabulary (e.g.,
vocabulary specific to domains of activity)
► phonetic reduction of high-frequency words
and phrases
► conventions of opening and closing of
genres and transitions
Oral academic language in sciences and
mathematics (con’t)
► schematic
conventionalized sequences of
morphemes that carry direct semantic
representation
► syntactic representation of a hypothesized
consequence-filled world of if-then or whatif possibilities
Flip the switch:
► Not
problem-solving but problem-identifying
► Plus
follow-through to accountability
Inquiry creative projects are linked to:
► Spaces
and times untied to predictable or
fixed boundaries (e.g., studios, laboratories,
and rehearsal zones)
► Deliberative discourse around alternatives in
identifying problems, laying out possible
(and probable) future scenarios, and
examining alternative resolutions,
approaches, or solutions
Science laboratory (students with lab assistant in and out of room; takes
place during break hour after class has ended; teacher is in adjoining
room; students are setting up the demonstration for the next day going in
and out onto the schoolyard to collect materials
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S1:
S2:
S3:
S4:
S2:
it’s like multiplying, doing it all over again=
=yeh, just do it (laughter)
but how many kinds are there out there/
/in the world?
well, roots propagate=
S3: =and what’s the stuff called duff?
S5: (turns to SBH) isn’t California burning from this stuff?
SBH: not the whole state, but it is true that duff is
underground and carries fire unseen sometimes for miles
S6: so what’s good is also bad?
S1: huh? What’d you mean?
About 20 minutes later, as students are assessing
their demonstration and thinking about how to run
the class the next day:
S2: if we get going with the video, do you think it goes too long?=
S1: =or could we have some stuff for them to look at, like at a Halloween
show or something=
S2: =in paper bags, that’s stupid!
S4: but if we take it to some tables and get them to talk about what it
does or is, that will work, and maybe=
S3: =the tape could be going in the background
S4: does anybody have some good music like this?
S5: that will just get ‘em into party mood, and then they won’t listen and
stuff; you know what they do to Ms. R=
S4: =what do you mean “they?” you’re the big comic that tries to make
everybody laugh=
S5: but it’s different when you’re up there trying to help the others learn
These situations:
► View
youth as resources for:
► --classroom, learner, and often community
development
--intergenerational communication and bonding
--critically approved performances and exhibitions
--provision of ongoing learning environments
► Insist on turn-over learning: more expert learners
enable learning of less expert.
► Recognize
the interdependence of inquiry in arts
with skills, concepts, and practices of the sciences
and mathematics
► Find ways to embrace green development,
promote nutritional health, and dispense and
illustrate medical information
► Do their work through social entrepreneurship and
strong community connections
Types of Learning Environments
► Youth-led
arts enterprises (street educational
theatre, visual arts galleries, conference
centres, musical groups)
► Youth-led economic and ecological enterprises
(sustainable agriculture programs, green
architecture, community gardening)
► Youth-led journalistic/educational enterprises
(youth newspapers, community newspapers)
Processes of Learning in Scientific
Studies
► Search
out information
► Collect, examine, and compare
► Consider context(s) of performance
► Hypothesize possibilities in process that could
affect performance
► Assess the probabilities
► Work with precision
► Develop
technical vocabulary
► Create joint image of experiment
► Learn the properties of elements of operation
► Test out properties of tools, props, and
environment
► Determine limits on interactional interferences
Learning in mathematics asks that we:
► Discover
properties
► Compare concrete with abstract concepts
► Chart, model, and sketch mental images; delineate
proportions
► Understand combinatorial possibilities
► Undertake geometric progression (as well as
raising the power of current element)
► Learn to work with probabilities
Planful
Sustainable partnering
calls for:
► Learning
communities that engage in
deliberative discourse
► Meaning-based engagement
► Mutual respect for diverse bases and types of
knowledge and skills reflected within the
community
► Dense networks of audiences, clients, and
resources
► Sustaining
work on learning through observation
and translating visual knowledge into verbal
explication
► Advancing current ways of including different
languages and scripts by multilinguals into new
community art forms
Project-based learning works the same
way in both the arts and sciences:
► call
for time and space devoted to reflection and
imagination
► Are enriched through comparative perception and
experience
► become activated only through practice in moving
from beginning to completion in projects carried
out with or by professionals—and for meaningful
purpose
Types of language used
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Negotiated directives (“let’s, could you, should we)
Narratives of action and scenario projections
Event-scripted demonstrations with gestures and props
Cross-referencing of first-person action or reflection,
second-person recast, third-person verifiable retrievable
source; “swarms” of overlaps across speakers
Strategic insertions of humor for “step-backs”
Metaphorical comparatives with interweaving from realworld or past-shared events/objects to current
challenges in layered forms of representation (gestural,
visual, sociodramatic)
Overlaps in language—sciences and
arts in project development:
► 86%
overlap of 10-morpheme stretches in
grammatical structures and “rare” lexical
terminology
► Grammatical structures in (rough) order of
frequency: ir realis conditionals (if-then
propositions with multiple variables on either
side); what if (about)? queries; modals;
declaratives with causal and temporal connectors;
contrastive connectors; switch-reference pronouns
Types of language used
►
►
►
►
►
►
Negotiated directives (“let’s, could you, should we)
Narratives of action and scenario projections
Event-scripted demonstrations with gestures and props
Cross-referencing of first-person action or reflection,
second-person recast, third-person verifiable retrievable
source; “swarms” of overlaps across speakers
Strategic insertions of humor for “step-backs”
Metaphorical comparatives with interweaving from realworld or past-shared events/objects to current
challenges in layered forms of representation (gestural,
visual, sociodramatic)
Reference-source reliance (in relative order of
frequency during practice/critique/reflection):
► External
verifiable retrievable sources (such as
performances/exhibitions/experiments jointly
viewed, or published sources known to all). etc.
► Secondary oral reports (from sources known to
present company) or recasts of jointly shared
learning experiences by the present group (we…)
► First-person accounts without possible source
retrieval
► Go
to www.creative-partnerships.com to
download:
► Heath, S. B., Boehncke-Paul, E., & Wolf, S.
2007. Made for each other: Creative
sciences and arts in the secondary school.
London: Creative Partnerships.
► Email [email protected] for
manuscripts to fill out points paid in this
presentation. Reference UC Davis 2/08 talk.