Free Literature Review About Short Answer Assignment

1) Spoken language is an absolutely integral element of learning which is often undervalued in educational settings – textbooks and written/visual stimulation are typically the preferred methods to teach students. However, spoken language has a great deal more to offer as a vehicle of learning than is typically considered for a variety of reasons. For example, the use of grammar and inflection is an important component to understanding, as words can often be divorced from their meanings. To that end, spoken language is an absolutely vital tool to teaching and learning, as complex ideas and concepts can be conveyed through the linguistic systems of inflection, tone and grammatical interpretation.
2) Spoken and written language often differ on a pair of dimensions – these two types of language operate under different conditions of production, in addition to being intended for different uses. Conditions of production involve the different contexts under which these languages are used – for example, an essay written for a course will naturally use more formal, considered language than a casual conversation. This also speaks to the intended use of the products of spoken and written language; the aforementioned essay will be one long, thought-out argument, whereas the casual spoken conversation is an immediate dialogue between two or more people.
3) Exophoric references are external, while endophoric references are internal. For example, an exophoric reference in a child’s paper might reference someone being like Bob the Builder; without explanation, the reader has to find out what Bob the Builder is independently of the paper. An endophoric reference in the paper would not make such outside references, at least without explaining them first. Children, having less world experience and having not developed their personalities as thoroughly, rely more on exophoric references as they can only frame their world in the context of other things they know.
4) Given the issues of this course, I believe that educators on the whole must be better informed about the importance of language as a socio-political issue. Prior to this course, I recognized that I tended to be comparatively more glib about the use of dialect and vernacular in people of lower-class backgrounds, as well as their lower levels of literacy. However, after understanding the deep connection between socio-cultural influences and literacy, I find myself being able to more closely relate to and frame the experiences that lead to these differences. Educators should become better informed about the connection between dialect, literacy and culture in order to provide more targeted, tolerant teaching to students of varying backgrounds.
5) Because children’s sense of literacy is not at an adult’s level, we must be able to look outside our expectations of what is ‘correct’ writing in order to more accurately analyse their work. For example, if a child uses a non-reversible passive phrase like “The glass of milk is being held in Mom’s hand,” the child fully understands what that means because of their semantic and syntactic knowledge, even though the use of passive voice is a poor use of linguistics in an adult sense. To that end, while an adult might write it differently, this is not wrong in the context of a child’s writing.
6) One of the most important aspects of writing that teachers can help young learners to develop include the need to instil purpose and a sense of genre in their work. Students must be taught how best to write for different contexts. Showing students what aspects of writing and linguistics work better in a formal paper than in a casual set of notes or a script is absolutely integral to allowing them to practice targeted diversity in their writing. Exposing students to many different kinds of writing and showing them the writing styles that comprise them is the best way to help them target their writing to their audience.
7) Phonics approaches to reading and literacy teaching require the instructor to associate the symbol of a letter and the sound it makes when spoken aloud. This works best with teaching individual words, and usually works best with words that work more ‘phonetically’ (like ‘cat’ and ‘dog’), but does not offer a greater context for using those words. The whole-language approach, on the other hand, focuses on context and purpose first. Unlike phonics approaches, whole-language approaches give a child a complete text, teaches them what it is for and what it is conveying, and works backwards from there. This is good for a more complete level of linguistic understanding, but makes it harder for children to get the details of individual words down.
8) Grammatical cohesion is the relation of sentences between each other using their structure and function words. This is the way in which sentences are linked from one to another in order to form a more considered, complete series of thoughts. Grammatical cohesion can happen through a variety of methods, including sentence connectors like conjunctions (and/but/or). One example is an ellipsis, in which phrases and words are left out in order to avoid redundancy in a conversation or thought. For example, if someone says “I’m going to see a movie tonight,” the reply “Which one?” operates on the previous sentence’s assumption that we already know they are seeing a movie.
9) Solsken claims that girls are usually more interested in linguistics than boys because reading, literacy and other such ‘passive’ activities are thought to be the responsibility of the woman, as they will likely be the one teaching their children to read (based on traditional gender norms of the woman staying at home and being the primary caretaker for children). Men, on the other hand, are culturally trained to focus on work and activity, with which reading and introspection are not necessarily associated. This generalized dichotomy between the priorities of men and women likely explains why girls feel more compelled to show interest in literacy and reading than boys.
10) Indigenous and Australian students experience a huge gap in literacy achievement due to a variety of factors. One hugely contributing factor is the SE prejudice toward dialect - aboriginal and indigeous dialects are often seen by others as bad because of their non-standard nature, and so less attention and respect is paid to them. Cultural differences are perceived as literacy achievement gaps, when in fact they are simply part of the aboriginal dialect. In order to best deal with these gaps in achievement, they may not necessarily need to be treated as such; instead, more effort should be expended to understand and tolerate aboriginal and indigenous dialects and language construction.