Heather Code Switching
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This document discusses code-switching in student composition and outlines some goals for further research on this topic. It provides background on how code-switching demonstrates communicative advantages and helps develop fluency. The document discusses how language usage is motivated by social functions and students' own purposes and values. It aims to better understand what motivates language usage and apply this to inform the author's research question and data collection plans when student teaching.
Heather Code Switching
- 1. Code-Switching in Student Composition Heather Putnam 8/1/07
- 2. Why do some students demonstrate more proficiency in code-switching than others?
- 3. Background Information Monolingualism over pluralism is a recent phenomenon Communicative advantages to a bi- or multilingual repertoire “ Draw(ing) on multiple codes for different purposes” requires much “sophistication and skill” (Cahnmann) “ Every time teachers insist on a uniform variety of language or discourse, we are helping reproduce monolingualist ideologies and linguistic hierarchies” (Canagarajah)
- 4. Social Functions of Language Socially significant needs in everyday life For Somali immigrant students in Toronto, “hip-hop English serves more functions in peer group social interaction and self-presentation” “ In London, Bengali students’ Jamaican English serves more functional purposes for networking in their immediate environment” Classroom English can contradict preparation for the workplace and civic involvement Using language according to one’s own purposes and values helps develop fluency
- 5. Application Understand what motivates language usage what it means to communicate in multiple codes “Valuing the varieties (of English) that matter to students can lessen the inhibitions against dominant codes” (Canagarajah)
- 6. Goals Read more to better inform my research question and/or to change or tweak the question Data Collection Conferencing with students on their work Specific situation will play a role Decide where I’ll be student teaching, so that I have a population to work with!
- 7. Works Cited Cahnmann , Melisa . “Reading, Living, and Writing Bilingual Poetry as ScholARTistry in the Language Arts Classroom.” Language Arts, Urbana 83.4 (2006): 342-52. Canagarajah, A. Suresh. “The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued.” College Composition and Communication , Urbana 57.4 (2006): 586-619. Gort, Mileidis. “Strategic Codeswitching, Interliteracy, and Other Phenomena of Emergent Bilingual Writing: Lessons from First Grade Dual Language Classrooms.” Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 6.3 (2006): 323-354. Howard, Rebecca Moore. “The Great Wall of African American Vernacular English in the American College Classroom.” A Journal of Composition Theory 16.2 (1996): 265-83 Pendarvis, Edwina. “At the Edge of the Past: Appalachian Issues and English Composition.” Paper presented at NCTE Conference, NY. March 2000.