Response 09/23

As I read all the articles, by amazement I discover how people are sharing the same concerns with me. The case studies and examples of students from different learning styles and backgrounds also lead me into a new kind of search for themes that I could use in my own classrooms. I have to admit that I had great difficulty in grasping the eaning of his “pinyin” analogy in Hartwell’s article. This article made more sense to me after discussing the concept of “literacy” in class.

Hartwell seems to be very disturbed by the idea that, we as teachers are so busy analyzing the surface forms of the language that our students use, that we forget about literacy, and the importance of communication. I found the iceberg metaphor highly relevant in talking about the surface and the underlying levels of literacy. When it comes to the transmission of literacy, I still tend to believe that the teacher plays an active role in this transmission, but I also agree that it’s embedded in social relationnships and doubtlessly metacognition and metalinguistic awareness are of equal importance when it comes to literacy. A student has to be conscious and analyze himself constantly but in order to monitor his/her own learning he would need a guide and this would be the teacher.

Hartwell also harshly criticizes the false assumptions of the teachers who emphasize alphabetic literacy, he claims that the world is not stable and literacy is a dynamic thing, and culture has a huge impact on the development of literacy which I totally agree. He also talks about how we can acquire literacy outside of schooling. Thus, he underestimates the active role of the teacher. I would agree on his view that teacher is not the center of authority in a classroom and there’s something called “teacher talk”, yet I don’t believe that all teachers are isolated from the real world. I can’t also see how teacher talk can hinder learning. Of course the social use of the language is as equally important as the teacher talk, but in my view teacher’s role is to facilitate learning not to impede it by imposing an authoritarian approach.

Keeping dialogue journals is a great way for the students to express themselves and the dialogue between the teacher and student would be a continuous one, so they would produce more and more. I would also try to involve my students in a language in the real world like assigning them various topics at different literacy events and they would end up writing more each time.

In Hartwell’s view establishing a sense of recovery from the traditional teacher role seems like the ideal role for a teacher. However, neither we as teachers nor our students would see each other as equals no matter what role the teacher assumes. What really matters is the encouragement that they would get from their teacher. Giving them the feeling that they can achieve, that is to say embracing positive reinforcement is indispensible.

Regarding Collision Course, Chapter 2 gave me some ideas of different methods that I can make use of, but the results of these methods weren’t really clear to me. If students write from their personal experiences as in the case of Cris and Clarissa, they’re too much involved in expressing their own experience that “their lack of personal distance” precedes over the nature of the essay. However, when Chuck and Larry write about other topics that are not related to them, the result is another dissapointment. So, we can conclude that, giving them a social context may not always work. The answer lies in providing students the right, individually tailored social contexts and to motivate them.