Note: This is an assignment in English 326 (Language Studies for Teachers), a course taught by John C. Schafer.
I. Overview
As you can see from the syllabus, beginning in week 8 you will work on your final Group Project in your group meetings. (In week 6 you will discuss your projects briefly.) During the last five days of the semester, each group will make a presentation to the whole class on the topic it has been working on. Each group will have one entire class--50 minutes--to give their presentation. All members of the group will work on the presentation, but some members may speak more than others. Each member will explore one aspect of the topic his or her group is working on. The topics are as follows:
Grammar and the Teaching of Writing
Comparing English to Other Languages
Reading: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and the Search for a Balanced Approach
II. Mode of Presentation
Group members can decide how they want to present information on their topic. The presentation can include a video (no longer than 15 minutes, however), a panel discussion format with "experts" speaking on different aspects of the topic, staged interviews (interviews rehearsed ahead of time), short skits to dramatize certain points, or more traditional short oral reports. Another possibility is a video of a real interview, perhaps with a local teacher. It's possible to borrow a video camera for this purpose. (An interview with a teacher could help you meet the requirement mentioned in III-F below.) The idea is to choose a format that will make your presentation interesting and informative. If you know Power Point, software that enables one to give impressive presentations, you may wish to use it for your presentation-or at least part of it.
III. Required Features of Group Presentations
A. All members must be involved in the research and planning that precedes the final presentation.
B. Groups should hand out a brief "agenda" that lists the key parts of the presentation.
C. A group's presentation should include at least one handout (in addition to the agenda) that conveys information about the topic--a chart, a picture, an outline of key points. You could make a transparency and use the overhead projector, if you wish.
D. Each presentation must include at least five minutes for questions and answers. Group members should be ready with a plan to use the time productively if there are no questions.
E. You should consider ways you can involve the audience in your presentation. Some possibilities:
F. Your presentation should include a section that addresses how your topic relates to teaching issues. In other words, group members should discuss the practical implications for teachers of the information they are presenting.
IV. How the Individual Paper Relates to the Group Project
You should write a paper on some aspect of your group's topic. This individual paper can be a further development of your contribution to the Group Project. Say, for example, you belong to the "Gender and Language" group. Your assignment within the group has been to explore how men and women use language differently when they participate in group activities. You would research this topic and discuss your findings with your group members; and perhaps you would report your findings orally when your group gives its presentation. In addition, you would write an individual paper on "Women's and Men's Ways of Talking in Groups" that would be turned in to me for a grade (This grade for your individual paper is a separate grade; it's not part of your grade for your group work.) This paper would be a medium-length research paper (5 pages or so).
V. How Your Contributions to the Group Project Will Be Evaluated
Your grade for your group work will be based on the following:
A. Attendance at group meetings (Missing group meetings hurts your grade.)
B. Self-evaluation (I'll ask you to provide me with your own evaluation of your contributions to the work of the group.)
C. My judgment of how you've contributed to the group
VI. How the Group's Final Presentation Will Be Evaluated
Each group's final presentation will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
A. Did it include all the required elements--agenda, handout, question and answer period, section that addresses practical implications for teaching, etc.?
B. Was accurate information on the topic presented?
C. Was the information presented in a clear and engaging way?
D. Were the evaluations done by your classmates positive? (Your classmates will be asked to evaluate the overall effectiveness of the presentation.)
VII. Ways Groups Should Proceed
Here's a rough schedule that suggests ways to use your group meetings to prepare for your presentations. Remember that you will also need to use part of your group time for work on Verb Tense Exercises.
Week of Oct. 2-6 (Week 6): Discuss this handout ("Group Project"). Members who have questions about it can raise them. If other members can't answer the questions, the group leader can make a note of them and check with me. Discuss the article (or articles) that I have identified (See below, "Suggestions for Each Group") as a good introduction to your topic. (Click on your group topic to go to these articles: Grammar and Writing, Acquisition of Language, Comparing English to Other Languages, Reading: Phonemic Awareness, etc., Gender and Language.) Discuss how the topic can be broken down into five parts--five individual areas of responsibility (I suggest possible ways of dividing topics into subtopics, but you don't have to accept my suggestions.) Decide who takes which area (Try to work it out so members get the area that interests them). Agree that each person will report on her area next meeting.
Week of Oct. 16-20 (Week 8): Hear reports from members on their area of responsibility. Begin to discuss in a preliminary way the Final Group Presentation. Discuss these questions: What are the main points about our topic that we want to get across to our audience? How can we best get our points across?
Week of Oct. 23-27 (Week 9): Rough drafts of individual papers related to group projects are due this week--on Fri.--but since you will be reading each other's papers and responding to them next week, it is better to wait till then to discuss them. Don't forget to bring copies of your papers to class on Friday--enough copies for each member of your group and one for me. In class on Friday you can decide which papers will be discussed during the group meeting time next week and which papers will be discussed in class on Wed., Nov. 1. See Week 10, below.
How you use your group time this week is up to you. Members could report on the highlights of their individual research efforts and propose aspects of their research that they think would be good to include in the group presentation. You could discuss the mode of presentation your group will use for your final presentation: Does your group prefer a panel discussion or individual oral reports? What handout or overhead will you use to help your classmates grasp your topic? Or a group might decide to use this week's meeting to work on Verb Tense Exercises.
Week of Oct. 30-Nov. 3 (Week 10): Groups will meet twice this week: once during the regular group meeting time and once during the regular class period on Wed. (in the regular classroom). Extra meeting time is provided to ensure you will have enough time to respond to each group member's paper.
Be sure to comment in writing on your classmates' papers, using a form I will provide, before they are discussed. (Remember some papers will be discussed during your group's regular meeting time and some in class on Wed., Nov. 1.) The response form will prompt you to mention strengths, identify unclear points, suggest possible revisions, and indicate information that you think could be included in your group's presentation. During your two meetings this week each group member will respond to papers written by the other members of the group, using the written form as a guide. A copy of the forms should be given to the author and to me.
Week of Nov. 6-10 (Week 11): Since you will be doing Verb Tense Exercise 5 this week, a review of the twelve tenses, you might want to concentrate on verb tenses this week and make sure you understand them. Of course, if there are some issues related to your group presentation that need to be discussed, you should do so.
Week of Nov. 13-17 (Week 12): Group meetings are optional this week. Meet if you need to in order to plan your group presentation.
Week of Nov. 27-Dec. 1 (Week 13): Use this meeting to pull the presentation together--to finish work on the agenda, the handout, the survey or quiz you're using to engage your audience, etc. If time allows, you could have a "dress rehearsal" for your presentation. If you're using a panel format, panel members can give their presentations. If you have audio-visual aids, you can practice using them. If the group's presentation is not ready for dress rehearsal by the time of your group meeting for this week, you may need to schedule your dress rehearsal for another time.
Class time on Fri., Dec. 1, will also be devoted to group meetings to plan the final presentations.
Week of Dec. 4-8 (Week 14): First three groups ("Grammar," "Acquisition," and "Comparing Languages") give their presentations this week. No group meetings this week unless a group needs to meet for last minute planning.
Week of Dec. 11-15 (Week 15): Last two groups ("Reading" and "Gender") give their final presentations. No group meetings this week unless a group needs tomeet for last minute planning.
VIII. Suggestions for Each Group
A. Grammar and the Teaching of Writing
A great deal of class time in both elementary and middle schools is devoted to grammar instruction. Research suggests, however, that formal grammar instruction does not improve the quality of student writing. So why is grammar taught so much? Should teachers stop teaching it? Teach it using different methods? Are there other reasons for teaching grammar besides improving student writing?
These are some of the questions this group will explore. A good place to begin, and the article I would suggest reading for your first meeting during week 6, is chapter two from the following work:
The above article contains a useful list of nine "references [articles] for and against the teaching of formal grammar" (p. 8). After reading this overview by Weaver, the group might want to look closely at one or two of these articles. A study that is not on this list but is summarized by Weaver is one by Elley et al. This research study is often cited to prove that grammar instruction is useless in improving writing quality. For one meeting, the group might like to look closely at this study:
The English Journal, a journal of the secondary section of the National Council of Teachers of English, devoted their November, 1996, issue to "The Great Debate" about teaching grammar and usage (Vol. 85, No. 7). You might check it out.
Two famous teacher trainers, Susan J. Tchudi and Stephen N. Tchudi, have some interesting things to say about the great grammar debate and also make some good teaching suggestions in Chapter 11 ("Grammar, Dialects, and Correctness") of The English Language Arts Handbook (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 19999) 201-217. [Reserve].
Another good work, one which could be read and talked about in later sessions, is the following:
Noguchi, Rei R. Grammar and the Teaching of Writing. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1991 [Reserve].
The group could discuss chapters one and two, although all of this short book is useful.
One problem is that most researchers have focused on high school students, not younger students. (But see the studies by Calkins [1980] and DiStepfano and Killion [1984] mentioned by Weaver on pp. 176-178.) To correct this imbalance, group members could interview or survey local elementary school teachers and get their views on the teaching of grammar. In the final presentation, group members could also share with the class samples of lessons in grammar--excerpts from language arts textbooks--that are used in local schools.
Five possible areas of responsibility:
1. Summary and evaluation of research that allegedly proves formal grammar study does not improve writing.
2. A report on Weaver's and/or Tchudi and Tchudi's recommendations.
3. An examination and report on how several widely used language arts textbooks present information on grammar.
4. A demonstration of a mini-lesson in grammar of the type recommended by Atwell in In the Middle, Calkins in The Art of Teaching Writing, and Weaver in the book mentioned above. In the Appendix to Weaver's book there are many sample mini-lessons.
5. Report of interviews with local teachers, or of a survey done of local teachers, regarding their views and practices relating to grammar and writing.
B. The Acquisition of Language
Some people argue that a child's mastery by age five of a large part of their native language is the most remarkable of all human achievements. Members of this group can explore this ability. Though much remains a mystery, researchers have learned a great deal.
For this topic a good place to begin--the best article to read for your meeting in week six-- is "First-Language Acquisition," Chapter 8 of Linguistics for Non-Linguists by Fran Parker and Kathryn Riley (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1994).
Language: Readings in Language and Culture (abbrev.: LRLC), edited by Virginia P. Clark et al. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998) [Reserve] will be a good source, particularly the section called "Children and Language." Look at "The Acquisition of Language" by Breyne Arlene Moskowitz, a good overview, and also at the articles by Lenneberg and Aitchison (These two articles are conveniently taken together) and then the article by Miller and Gildea.
If you have young children yourself, or access to some, you (perhaps aided by another group member) can collect some data--record children's speech, for example--and then share it with the class during your group report. You can point out what the recorded speech suggests about the acquisition stage the child or children are in. You can simply record a conversation that you have with a young child, or one that he or she has with a friend, or you can elicit data from them. Say, for example, you wanted to determine how a child was acquiring English morphology, in particular the regular plural allomorph /z/ (as in words like "frogs" /fragz/ and "beads" /bidz/. Jean Berko Gleason checked acquisition of this plural allomorph by showing kids a picture of what she told them was a "wug." Then she showed them two "wugs" and asked them to complete the sentence "Now there are two________." Kids who said "wugs" (/wcgz/) were noted as having acquired the /z/ plural allomorph. Gleason describes some other similar experiments that you might want to replicate with your own (or neighbors') children. Gleason's article is in Louis Bloom's Readings in Language Development (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978), pp. 39-59 [Reserve].
To involve your classmates in this topic, you could first talk about stages of acquisition, mentioning some key features of the stages, and then give them a transcript of child language and ask them to determine the child's level of acquisition.
This group could divide their topic as follows:
1. How children acquire phonology (See Parker and Riley's "First Language Acquisition" in Linguistics for Non-Linguistics, pp. 193-195.)
2. How children acquire morphemes (See Roger Brown's A First Language; see article by Moskowitz in LRLC, pp. 529-555)[Book on Reserve]
3. How children acquire words (See article by Miller and Gildea in LRLC)
4. How children acquire syntax and semantics (See articles by Moskowitz and by Parker and Riley)
5. Implications of current research on language acquisition for primary school teachers
Or this group could divide "language acquisition" into these subtopics:
1. Lenneberg's critical period hypothesis
2. Caretaker speech; how important is it to language acquisition?
See article by Shirley Brice Heath in LRLC and also this book: Talking to Children: Language Input and Acquisition edited by Charles A. Ferguson and Catherine E. Snow.
3. The stages of acquisition
4. What we've learned from the case histories such as those of Isabelle and Genie (See LRLC, pp. 588-606; see also works by Susan Curtiss listed in the bibliography on p. 623 of LRLC).
5. Implications of current research on language acquisition for primary school teachers
See pp. 623-625 in LRLC for a useful "Selected Bibliography" of works on language acquisition. A good book on that list is the one by Jill G. de Villiers and Peter A. de Villiers-Language Acquisition.
C. Comparing English to Other Languages
One can learn a lot about one's own language by comparing it to other languages. This group's project will be to compare English to at least two other languages one of which is a non-Indo-European Language. Article #31 in LRLC explains what is meant by Indo-European Language. Included is a chart of the "Indo-European Family Tree" (p. 417).
Begin your investigation of this topic by reading "The Classification of Languages" by Alexsandra Steinbergs, Chapter Nine of Contemporary Linguistics by William O'Grady, Michael Dobrovolsky, and Mark Aronoff (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977) [Reserve].
In contrasting languages linguists speak of genetic classification and typological classification. In genetic classification languages are grouped according to their descent. Languages that developed historically from the same ancestor language are said to be "genetically related." Sometimes languages that are genetically related are quite different typologically, that is they have different structural characteristics. Latvian and English, for example, are genetically related (both are Indo-European languages) but they have a very different morphological structure.
Typological classification involves comparison at these levels:
1. Phonology
How many vowel phonemes? How many consonant phonemes? What is the syllable structure? Are consonant clusters permitted? Etc.
2. Morphology
In comparing languages at the level of morphology, linguists talk of isolating, polysynthetic, synthetic-agglutinating, synthetic-fusional, and mixed types of languages (See "The Classification of Languages" by Steinbergs for an explanation of these terms; they aren't as difficult as they may sound). What type is English? What type are the languages you are comparing English to?
3. Syntax
A common comparison at this level is word order in simple declarative sentences. There are three common word orders: Subject-Object-Verb (SOV), SVO, and VSO. What order does English have? What order occurs in the languages you are comparing English to? In some languages (Russian, e.g.) word order can be varied to emphasize certain words or to create stylistic effect. Is this possible in English? Why or why not?
4. Discourse
Researchers interested in "contrastive rhetoric" have compared languages at the discourse or text level. Some researchers argue, for example, that Chinese and Korean writers organize paragraphs differently from native-speakers of English. Kaplan suggests Chinese and Korean writers prefer a more cyclical organization whereas English writers prefer a more linear structure. Hinds (see below) argues that Japanese organize discourse differently because Japanese unlike English is a "reader responsible" language. Here are two articles to read to learn more about comparing languages at the level of discourse:
Here's a possible way to divide up the responsibility. (I'm assuming the group has chosen to compare English to two other languages.)
1. Genetic Classification. Explain how a genetic classification differs from a typological classification. Explain how English is genetically or not genetically related to the two other languages by discussing the family trees of the three languages.
2. Typological comparison at level of phonology.
3. Typological comparison at level of morphology.
4. Typological comparison at level of syntax and discourse.
5. Discussion of some difficulties speakers of the two non-English languages might have in learning English.
D. Reading: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and the Search for a Balanced Approach
In the mid-90's the National Assessment of Education Progress reported that California students ranked near the bottom in reading proficiency. In one set of scores, only students in Guam fared more poorly. These dismal results provoked a fierce debate, sometimes referred to as "the reading wars," between advocates of a phonics approach to teaching reading and advocates of a whole-language approach (see "A Note on Terms: Conceptualizing Phonics and Whole Language" in Constance Weaver's Reconsidering a Balanced Approach to Reading, pp. 5-9 [Reserve] for a short explanation of "phonics" and "whole language"). Those who advocate phonics base their argument on research that suggests that explicit instruction in sound-letter correspondences is essential to develop reading skill. Advocates of whole-language approaches argue that intensive phonics instruction is not useful and favor instead a literature-based reading program featuring exposure to meaningful texts.
Another way to get a feel for the reading wars is to read two articles from California English (Spring, 1996), one by Ken Goodman, a leading advocate of whole language approaches, that attacks phonics approaches and one by Bill Honig that supports them. Honig, a former superintendent of education in California, converted to phonics approaches after he left office. Both writers discuss a report by the California Reading Task Force, Every Child a Reader (1995), which advocates what it calls a "balanced approach," but is designed to correct what it sees as a harmful neglect of explicit phonics. This report is short--26 pages--and should be read along with the articles by Goodman and Honig.
In California the reading wars are pretty much over with victory going to those advocating phonemic awareness training and phonics instruction. To learn about key initiatives in California related to reading instruction, a good place to begin is a site called the California Reading Initiative maintained by the California Department of Education. There you will read about (and be able to access online versions of) the new English-Language Arts Content Standards (1998) and the new Reading/Language Arts Curriculum Framework (1999). This new framework, which replaces the 1987 framework (now considered too whole-language oriented) mandates what the CDE considers a “balanced” approach to reading instruction (others--see below--consider it imbalanced on the phonics side). You can also access another important CDE document related to reading instruction, a program advisory called "Teaching Reading: A Balanced, Comprehensive Approach to Teaching Reading in Pre-kindergarten through Grade Three" (1996). This advisory, intended for school districts, suggests ways of implementing the approach to teaching reading outlined in Every Child a Reader. You may find it most convenient to access the above CDE documents from the CDE's site Reading and Language Arts: Information and Resources.
Nationally, too, "phonemic awareness" and "systematic, explicit phonics" are becoming cherished concepts. A National Reading Panel has recently (April, 2000) issued a report entitled Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction (available in pdf--portable document format). This panel concludes that phonemic awareness training and phonics instruction produce better readers.
The wars are not completely over, however. Though everyone talks now of a "balanced" approach to reading instruction, some researchers and teachers fear that approaches touted as balanced are actually imbalanced on the phonics side of the scale. Constance Weaver, for example, thinks that the two key California documents mentioned above--Every Child a Reader and "Teaching Reading: A Balanced, Comprehensive Approach"--are not balanced at all but harmfully overweighted on the phonics side (see the introduction and first chapter of Weaver's Reconsidering a Balanced Approach to Reading). Some researchers have argued that the low reading scores in California are not the result of a literature-based (whole language) curriculum but stem from other causes--the lack of books in school libraries and the poverty of students, for example (see articles by Jeff McQuillan and Kenneth Goodman in Reconsidering a Balanced Approach to Reading). Other scholars have attacked the research on which the phonics movement is based. The titles of the following two books suggest the views of their authors:
Possible areas of responsibility:
1. What is phonemic awareness? What does this term have to do with the linguistic concept of the phoneme that we have studied in the phonetics section of English 326? Why are some scholars arguing for the imporance of phonemic awareness training?
2. What is meant by phonics? What is the difference between explicit (or synthetic) phonics and implicit (or analytic) phonics? What is "embedded phonics" (You could include examples of phonics lessons from textbooks used in local schools.)
3. What is the whole-language approach to reading? (You could include a sample of a whole language lesson. Since the 1987 Language-Arts Framework [On Reserve]--now abandoned--was considered too "whole language," you could look at it and compare it to the new framework.)
3. Interviews with or surveys of local primary grade teachers regarding their thoughts concerning the current push for more phonemic awareness training and more phonics activities. Do they feel that the 1987 Language Arts Framework was imbalanced in the whole language direction? Do they applaud the move away from it? Are they pleased with the current approaches stressing "systematic explicit phonics" that are demanded by current state laws?
5. Analysis of the balanced approach which is recommended by the CDE and which is supposed to be embodied in official CDE documents, including the new Reading/Language Arts Framework. How does one define balance? Is California on the road to a truly balanced approach? For ways to define balance, see Jill Fitzgerald's "What Is This Thing Called 'Balance'?" (Reading Teacher 53 (Oct., 1999) 100-107 [Reserve]. See also the introduction and first chapter of Constance Weaver's Reconsidering a Balanced Approach to Reading [Reserve].
6. Discussion of a controversial research study. Look at a research study that more than any other has caused the movement toward more phonics but has been attacked by critics. The study is listed below. For criticism of it, see Chapter 4 of Denny Taylor's Beginning to Read and Chapter 3 of Gerry Coles' Misreading Reading.
For your meeting during week six I suggest you read "Power, Sex, and Talk," Chapter 2 of Sex Differences in Human Communication by Barbara Westbrook Eakins and R. Gene Eakins (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978) [Reserve]. Although twenty years old, it remains a popular book on gender and language. One advantage of this book is that it suggests mini-projects and data-gathering techniques that you could use in your research.
Professsor Laurie Finke, Director of Women's Studies at Kenyon College, has also put together some interesting exercises on languge and gender. I urge you to look at them and consider doing one of the exercises as research for your topic. (I suggest some relevant exercises from Dr. Finke's list below.)