scholarly journals Ideology and Postvernacularity in 21st Century Yiddish Pedagogy

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-98
Author(s):  
Alex McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Classroom Practices ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Ethnographic Field Work

In this paper, based on five weeks of ethnographic field work in a Yiddish classroom in Poland, I describe how Yiddish language ideologies were realized and enacted within the classroom by language learners and teachers alike. This paper connects these language ideologies and classroom practices to larger historical negotiations of the Jewish past occurring within contemporary Poland, negotiations that center around memory and space. I argue that Yiddish can be understood as an object in cultural flux, discursively framed by multiple intersecting and, at times, contradictory narratives. Focusing on Yiddish language classrooms in contemporary Poland in particular, I demonstrate how Yiddish is embedded in non-Jewish Polish narratives and historical negotiations, as well those of diaspora Jewry.

scholarly journals Language ideologies and identities in Kurdish heritage language classrooms in London

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (253) ◽  
pp. 173-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birgul Yilmaz
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Heritage Language Learners ◽  
Phonological Features ◽  
Language Classes ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Language Schools ◽  
Distinct Features ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article investigates the way that Kurdish language learners construct discourses around identity in two language schools in London. It focuses on the values that heritage language learners of Kurdish-Kurmanji attribute to the Kurmanji spoken in the Bohtan and Maraş regions of Turkey. Kurmanji is one of the varieties of Kurdish that is spoken mainly in Turkey and Syria. The article explores the way that learners perceive the language from the Bohtan region to be “good Kurmanji”, in contrast to the “bad Kurmanji” from the Maraş region. Drawing on ethnographic data collected from community-based Kurdish-Kurmanji heritage language classes for adults in South and East London, I illustrate how distinctive lexical and phonological features such as the sounds [a:] ~ [ɔ:] and [ɛ]/[æ] ~ [a:] are associated with regional (and religious) identities of the learners. I investigate how these distinct features emerge in participants’ discourses as distinctive identity markers. More specifically this article examines how language learners construct, negotiate and resist language ideologies in the classroom.

Standing in Dorothy’s Shoes: What Can Language Teachers Learn from Dorothy Heathcote? Part One: Where Dorothy Came From, What She Did, and How It Can Support Language Development

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-12
Author(s):  
Ben Cowburn
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Process Drama ◽  
Drama Education ◽  
Educational Drama ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Dorothy Heathcote ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Many

From the 1960s onwards, Dorothy Heathcote became a highly influential figure in UK drama education. Her practice, based around unscripted, participatory dramas in which students were often guided by a teacher working ‘in role’, helped to shape the way drama is taught in schools today, particularly within the process drama approach. Influenced by a range of educational theorists and practitioners, Heathcote developed a style of educational drama that she saw as being distinct from ‘theatre’, and more concerned with experiencing drama than performing it. To this end, she developed a number of dramatic techniques, such as ‘Teacher in Role’ and ‘Mantle of the Expert’, to help students inhabit dramatic contexts and learn through the direct imagined experience of a particular place, time or problem to be solved. These techniques have much to offer language teaching, particularly when communication is the main goal. Placing students in dramatic contexts is claimed to enhance motivation and engagement and lead to more truly authentic communication than is often found in language classrooms. Using a framework based on Heathcote’s techniques, and those developed by other process drama educators, language teachers can begin to explore the many benefits drama can offer language learners.

scholarly journals The relationship between phonotactic awareness and pronunciation in adult second language learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-214
Author(s):  
Hanna Kivistö-de Souza
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
L1 English ◽  
L2 Pronunciation

Abstract: This study examined to what extent L1 Brazilian Portuguese (BP) EFL learners are aware of L2 phonotactics and whether there would be a relationship between L2 phonotactic awareness and L2 pronunciation accuracy. The language learners were tested regarding their awareness of L2 onset consonant clusters with a lexical decision task presenting nonword stimuli with legal and illegal onset clusters. L2 pronunciation was measured with a Foreign Accent Rating Task. The results showed that L1 BP participants showed a high awareness concerning L2 phonotactics, not differing from L1 English speakers, t(86)=.20, p =.83. Furthermore, high phonotactic awareness was found to be related to higher accuracy in L2 pronunciation (r= -.46, p <.001). The results suggest that phonotactics should be taught in foreign language classrooms since increasing learners’ awareness might be beneficial for the accuracy of their L2 pronunciation.

scholarly journals “Despite the Odds”: Unpacking the Politics of Black Resilience Neoliberalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin L. Clay
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Identity Development ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Black Youth ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Ethnographic Field Work ◽  
Policy Discourses

Through sustained ethnographic field work that inquired into youth participatory action researchers’ political identity development, I identified a politicized discourse engaged by youth during their early stages of action research that I have termed Black resilience neoliberalism (BRN). This study explicates BRN theory, tracing its connection to policy discourses related to Black youth and schools and exploring the ways its tenets are revealed in Black youth action researchers’ reflections on race/racism, inequality, and social change. I argue that BRN is both a conspicuous and an inconspicuous thread of neoliberal discourse and logic, which hides in plain sight as empowerment; however, it is entangled with the project of hegemony. To that end, destabilizing the legitimization of BRN is crucial to reconstituting empowerment.

scholarly journals Case Study of the Commercially Published ELT materials in Foundation of English Course Books 1 & 2

IIUC Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 173-182
Author(s):  
Md Yousuf Uddin Khaled Chowdhury
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Global Markets ◽  
Local Market ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
The Right

Brumfit (1979) has suggested that many commercially published ELT materials are little more than ‘masses of rubbish, skilfully marketed’. He perhaps rejects most of the published materials. However, in reality, it is observed that these ELT resources are the only available alternatives in the contexts where infra-structural limitations of language classrooms and the inefficiency of the language-teachers make the goal of language learning and teaching unreachable or unattainable for many of the learners. This paper, through a case study, aims at justifying the use of commercially published ELT coursebooks that are designed and used, considering the limitations and problems of the personally produced materials by untrained teachers. Nevertheless, these materials must consider the local market rather than the global markets so that they meet the needs of the local language learners and instructors. The case study implies that it is the selection or adaptation of the right materials for the specific learners that makes them effective or ineffective. It also suggests that the personally designed or locally produced materials too may make teaching and learning difficult and impossible sometimes.IIUC Studies Vol.10 & 11 December 2014: 173-182

scholarly journals Teaching Sociolinguistics: A Medium for Cultural Awareness of Indonesian University Foreign Language Learners

Humaniora ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 192
Author(s):  
Agnes Herawati
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
Language Classrooms

This paper tries to show the evidences that indicate how teaching Sociolinguistics can result in a number of valuable outcomes, including helping students understand and appreciate other cultures different from theirs. Sociolinguistics provides useful examples of language usage in different genres, including how culture influences people in using a language. The opportunities of learning other cultures through language will take the students to the higher level of appreciation of the culture of the target language. To determine how this outcome can be achieved in the language classrooms, this paper provides a review of closely connected literature about how to bridge the gap between cultures in particular. However, to increase its completeness and relevance, this paper also provides some research results that reveal how teaching Sociolinguistics has taken its new applicability and importance, and furthermore adds the effects on how students become more proficient and enthusiastic about their learning. 

scholarly journals Making Masculinity in Plasma Physics

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-65
Author(s):  
Helena Pettersson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Plasma Physics ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Field Work ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Ethnographic Field Work

The aim of this article is to analyse masculinity and experimental practices among plasma physicists. The study is based on ethnographic field work with observations and interviews among experimental plasma physicists in a laboratory in the United States. Through daily practices and hands-on situations, the experimental plasma physicists defined their experimental work as strongly associated with masculinity. Both practices and discourses about working with the experiments were fringed with connotations of a craft, of strength and physical efforts. Together, the practices and discourses were used as marks of identity for the laboratory and for the group of physicists within.

The Pitfalls and Promises of Electronic Portfolio Assessment With Secondary English Language Learners

2018 ◽  
pp. 111-130
Author(s):  
Hyesun Cho
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
English Language Learners ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
English Language ◽  
Portfolio Assessment ◽  
Electronic Portfolio ◽  
Secondary English ◽  
Hybrid Identities ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Language Classrooms

This chapter discusses the pitfalls and promises of electronic portfolio assessment for English language learners in high school classrooms in the United States. In a three-year federally funded program designed to improve academic performance among culturally and linguistically diverse students at an urban high school in Honolulu, Hawaii, the author implemented electronic portfolio assessment (EPA) into academic English and heritage language classrooms. This chapter delineates how EPA was developed to enhance academic and linguistic abilities of adolescent ELLs while embracing their multifaceted and hybrid identities. It also presents both challenges and benefits that teachers and students experienced in the process of EPA. It concludes with suggestions for developing and implementing EPA for English language learners in similar contexts.

iPad and iPod in the Language Classrooms

2018 ◽  
pp. 286-306
Author(s):  
Martine Pellerin
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Oral Language ◽  
Learning Experiences ◽  
Collaborative Action Research ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Innovative Learning ◽  
Innovative Learning Environments

The chapter examines how the use of emergent mobile technologies such as iPad and iPod in the classroom with young language learners can promote innovative learning environments and authentic oral language learning experiences. The chapter is based on a collaborative action research (CAR) project involving young French language learners in primary schools in a western province of Canada. Findings show that the affordances of mobile technologies support the creation of innovative learning environments and authentic oral language learning experiences through collaborative dialogue and peer-peer scaffolding among young language learners. The outcomes of the inquiry also demonstrate that the use of mobile devices such as iPad and iPod promotes the emergence of metacognitive reflection among learners, as well as a greater sense of agency and autonomy.

Exploring a Transformative Teacher Professional Development Model to Engender Technology Integration in the 21st Century ESL Language Classrooms

2021 ◽  
pp. 637-657
Author(s):  
Kean Wah Lee ◽  
Cynthia C. James
Keyword(s):  
Learning Community ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Immigrant Teachers ◽  
Technology In Teaching ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Professional Development Model ◽  
Develop Technology ◽  
Teacher Professional ◽  
Set Up

A 21st century teacher must communicate in the language and style of their students to ensure that their learning is meaningful. However, this is challenging, especially for teachers who are less familiar with using technology in teaching. To inspire a group of ESL ‘digital immigrant' teachers, a professional learning community (PLC) was set up. PLC consisted of both pre-service teachers (digital natives) and in-service teachers (digital immigrants). The two groups exchanged knowledge through a series of sharing sessions to demonstrate the technical aspects of technology, as well as to provide an understanding that technology has affordances and constraints. This case study investigates a group of in-service teachers who adopted the IDDIRR instructional design model (introduce, demonstrate, develop, implement, reflect, revise) to develop technology-based lessons for their ESL classrooms. The data for this study were collected through three main instruments: surveys, interviews and written reflections. The survey data was descriptively analysed using SPSS Version 24, while the reflection and interview data were assessed using thematic analysis. The findings suggest that the IDDIRR-TPACK + PLC model, along with a supportive PLC environment and the presence of more knowledgeable peers (MKO), helped enhance teachers' TPACK and inspired them to integrate more technology in their classrooms.

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