1. What Teachers Need to Know About Language
Fillmore & Snow (2000) ERIC ED308705

2. Agent of Socialization
Teacher as …
Communicator
Educator
Evaluator
Educated Human Being
Agent of Socialization

3. Oral Language 1. What are the basic units of language?
2. What is regular and what isn’t?
3. How is the lexicon acquired and structured?
4. Are vernacular dialects different from “bad English” and if so, how?
5. What is academic English?
6. Why has the acquisition of English by non-English-speaking children not been more universally successful?

4. Written Language 7. Why is English spelling so complicated?
8. Why do students have trouble with structuring narrative and expository writing?
9. How should one judge the quality and correctness of a piece of writing?
10. What makes a sentence or a text easy or difficult to understand?

5. Oral Language Development

6. What are the basic units of language?

7. 2. What is regular and what isn’t?

8. 3. How is the lexicon acquired and structured?

9. 4. Are vernacular dialects different from “bad English” and if so, how?

10. 5. What is academic English?

11. 6. Why has the acquisition of English by non-English-speaking children not been more universally successful?

12. Written Language Development

13. 7. Why is English spelling so complicated?
Variation – “blood is good food”
No “Language Academy” prescriptive
Deep orthography – complex spellings, irregular words
Etymological
Ph = /f/
Y = /ai/

14. 8. Why do students have trouble with structuring narrative and expository writing?
NARRATIVE: Mimic, learned, discourse strategy (sequence)
Latino – emphasizes personal relationship more than plot
Japanese – terse, not recounting all events
AAVE – end of the story is often the beginning
Expository: forming, arguing, precise, present facts

15. 9. How should one judge the quality and correctness of a piece of writing?
We as educators lack grounding in grammar
Teach students to polish
Understand structure
Discuss structure
Explicitly teach how to write effectively

16. 10. What makes a sentence or a text easy or difficult to understand?
Simple text – bullets
More coherent texts flow
Relevant
Coherence
Naturalness
Grace
Informativeness

17. What Teachers Need to Know About Language
Fillmore & Snow (2000) ERIC ED308705