Week 15

When reading the articles of the week I definitely thought about my own grading and what I would do in my own future classroom. I believe that when grading, some errors should be ignored when students are just learning English. There needs to be an in between in standardized English and diversification. As long as it does not affect the overall meaning of the sentence it should just be let go so that the student does not get discouraged when learning a new language. Language continues to change and we need to teach all types of Englishes so that they are aware of all the varieties of language. We used to be a syntactic language and now we are not so we need to raise the awareness of non-dominant forms of English. For example, we can teach the students what vernacular English. For example, the video we saw in class showed how the students knew how to code-switch into Standard English. English is learned through interaction with other people that it why when I have my bilingual classroom I will not want to isolate them from the mainstream classroom. I hope to conduct project and activities so that both groups of students are able to interact and get to learn about each other.

We also saw Writing across Borders made me realize that we cannot deduct points for ELLS when or non- native English speakers. I would just grade the concept that the student came up with and the content of the paper. Writing is different than speaking so it should be graded differently but also with caution so that they student does not get overwhelmed with errors. How do we assess growth if we aren’t grading or taking points off for minimal things? I think that even ELLS should not all be held at the same standards because they are not all the same and they come from different backgrounds. This goes the same way as for English native speakers. “A” work isn’t the same for all students but it becomes very difficult to draw the line of what is fair.  

Why are some cultures more valued than others? I think that it is become some cultures have a negative connotation. For example, some people after 9/11 have a negative image about people in the Middle East. Usually people who speak English or are from the United States are put on a pedestal because the country is big and wealthy. People all around the world learn about the United States however we don’t often learn about other country and it most cases we don’t even know where small countries are.