California Polytechnic State University
English Department

English 391: Topics in Applied Linguistics
Linguistics and Language Arts
Instructor:  Dr. Johanna Rubba

Reading Questions
Last updated 11/16/11
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This page is copyrighted 2011 to Johanna Rubba. It may not be used or reproduced in any form without the written permission of the author, with the exception of students enrolled in my classes.

Reading Questions will be handled as follows:

• Answer the questions for every reading, to hand in. Type them and print them out, please, single-spaced, with 1.25" margins, in aTimes font. I cannot accept these over e-mail. I also will not accept handwritten responses.
• Half the class will be graded on each reading (grading scale 1-10, 10 high). They will be due as assigned in the Assignment Schedule. Since these questions will be graded, I can't accept late Reading Question responses.
• All students must hand their answers in. If you are not in the group getting graded, you will receive a Pass or No Pass grade in your Homework record, depending on whether or not you have answered all the questions.
• If you have a lot of trouble with a question, you may write "I don't understand this question" and leave it without an answer. I won't expect to see this often, nor will I expect it to happen more than once per assignment.
• I know this is a lot of work, but it forces you to do and process the readings, and will enable you to ask questions in class, if you have not understood something. Also, I will call on people in class for answers to the questions. This will be a springboard for discussion and reduce the amount of time I have to spend lecturing.

Contents: Click on the author name to go to the questions for that reading.
Gee
Newby #1
Delpit
O'Grady & Cho #1 (Phon. devel.)
"Phonology, Phonics, and English Spelling"
Fredericks
Newby #2
Miller & Gildea
O'Grady & Cho #2 (Vocab./Morphol. Devel.)
Kruse and Honeyfield
VanPatten and Benati
Nieto
Delpit
Wheeler & Swords

How to use these questions: Look at the questions before you read. Answer the questions on notepaper as you read or after you read. Type them up to be handed in on the day they're due. The questions will be the basis for class discussion of the readings.
 

"What is literacy?" by James Paul Gee

For a little help with Gee's ideas, click here, or scroll to the bottom of the page.  "Discourse" in these questions refers to the notion of discourse as a sort of subculture.

1. What discourses have you partially or fully mastered? List the main ones. Think of groups, clubs, social circles, churches, etc. -- Cheerleading? How to be a member of a sports team? A good granddaughter/son? Babysitter? Youth camp counselor?
2. One example of discourses that most of us have experienced is high-school cliques. Describe two or three cliques in the high school you attended, and what  the criteria were for being a member. How did someone have to dress and talk to be accepted by the clique? What interests and activities did they pursue? What were their attitudes towards school and authority?
3.  What does Gee mean when he says on p. 58 "this is where we fail mainstream children just as much as non-mainstream ones"?
4.  Based on this article, do you think Gee would favor or disfavor a strongly multicultural curriculum?

The Structure of English, by Michael Newby, pp. 1-22
 

1. Newby writes about "knowing" (knowing how to do something subconsciously) vs. "knowing about", and about "metalanguage"; Gee also talks about "meta-level skills in regard to language" (p. 55). Are the two authors talking about roughly the same thing?
2. According to Newby, how do children learn language? Does his description fit what you have experienced of toddlers learning language? Give a few examples from your personal experience.
3. Have you ever experienced or witnessed an event of linguistic intolerance (that is, expression of prejudgment or prejudice based on a person's language use) (p. 15)? Recount it briefly.
4. Relate what Newby says about languages and styles to Gee's notion of a discourse: Is language, dialect, or style part of the "identity kit" for a discourse? Elaborate on your answer, giving specific examples from your own experience if you can.
5. According to Newby, are some dialects superior to others as vehicles for communication? From your experience with school and/or teaching materials, do our public schools agree with Newby's view (which is the view of linguists in general) in these matters? Explain.
    

Education in a Multicultural Society, by Lisa Delpit.

1. At the beginning of this article, Delpit names two negative results of a clash between a non-mainstream student's home culture (their primary discourse) and the school culture (a secondary discourse, and also the dominant discourse?) Describe each of these negative effects briefly.
2. Delpit wants to re-examine the causes of student underachievement. Instead of focusing on how non-mainstream children fail in school, she wants us to see how the schools fail non-mainstream children. She describes numerous teacher beliefs and practices which actually hurt nonmainstream students instead of helping them. Briefly describe three of these flawed beliefs/practices.
3. What ideas do Gee and Delpit have in common? Name two or three.

"The Study of Language Acquisition" and "Phonological Development", Sections 1 & 2 of O'Grady & Cho, "First Language Acquisition"

Section 1:

1. How do O'Grady & Cho define a "grammar"?
2. What do children's errors like goed, finded, and runned prove?
3. What is the difference between naturalistic and experimental studies of child language acquisition?

Section 2: Phonological development:

1. Children can hear differences between speech sounds from about 1 month onwards. At about what age do they begin to connect differences between sounds with differences between word meanings?
2. From what you read about babbling, would you conclude that babbling is innate (i.e., that children are born genetically programmed to babble), or not? And would you conclude that it is, or is not, to some degree necessary for normal language acquisition? Give reasons to justify both your answers. The reasons are in the text.

"Phonology, Phonics, and English Spelling"

1. What is phonics? What is the difference between phonics and phonetics?
2. What is the technical definition of an alphabet?
3. Define the term grapheme.What is the difference between a grapheme and a letter? Illustrate with examples.
4. Give two examples of each kind of grapheme. Give different examples from those in the reading.
5. Give two examples of the ways in which seemingly useless aspects of English spelling, such as silent letters, actually serve a purpose in the spelling system.

The Complete Phonemic Awareness Handbook, A. Fredericks. Pp. 8-33.

1. Would you classify phonemic awareness as a language ability/subconscious knowledge skill (a subconsciously-controlled ability), or as a metalinguistic/metaknowledge skill (conscious knowledge of aspects of language structure)? Justify your answer in a sentence or two.
2. According to research Fredericks cites, why is phonemic awareness essential to success in learning to read? Are there differences in reading success between children who have phonemic awareness and children who don't? Look for research results that he cites.
3. According to the section entitled "The Stages of Phonemic Awareness", does phonemic awareness progress synthetically (that is, children begin by working with individual sounds, gradually building them up into syllables, then whole words) or analytically (children begin by comparing whole words, then focus on ever-smaller word parts, from syllable parts to individual sounds). Defend your answer by citing support from this section.
   

"Morphemes" & "Words", Chs. 4 & 5 of Newby  Chapter 5:

1. Newby demonstrates a way of determining whether or not a word is an adjective, or a noun, that is probably not familiar to you. He contrasts this with the traditional way of determing what part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) a word belongs to. Describe Newby's way and the traditional way, and summarize his arguments to support the claim that his way (which is the method linguists use) is more accurate. Do you think this way of determining word class would be useful for schoolchildren? At which grade levels?
   

"How Children Learn Words" by Miller & Gildea

1. Do Miller & Gildea claim that children accomplish the rapid learning of vocabulary by being taught by adults? Explain your answer.
2. Miller & Gildea describe the two best ways to facilitate vocabulary growth. What are they? Give some specifics, in terms of, for example, how much reading should be done, and what kinds of activities teachers should encourage.
3. Summarize Miller & Gildea's critique of traditional vocabulary tasks such as looking up a new word in the dictionary, or writing a sentence with a new word that has been looked up in the dictionary.
   
   

"Vocabulary Development" and "Morphological Development", Sections 3 & 4 of O'Grady & Cho 

1. Summarize and give examples (different from those given in the reading) of the three strategies O'Grady & Cho list that guide children in acquiring word meanings.
2. What is the difference between overextension and overgeneralization? Give examples.
3. Survey the whole reading and summarize a child's vocabulary development at school age (about 5 years):  How many words do children know? What domains of meaning are the words likely to come from? How many of the English inflectional suffixes have they mastered (refer to An Overview of the English Morphological System for a chart). Have they begun learning derivational affixes? What strategies do they have for making up words if they need a word for a concept that is as yet unnamed for them?
   
   

"Vocabulary in Context" by Ann Fisher Kruse and "Word Frequency and the Importance of Context in Vocabulary Learning" by John G. Honeyfield 

Although these readings are about teaching English as a Second Language (ESL), much of what is said applies to native speakers of English as well. Certainly, the vocabulary enrichment techniques they teach are usable in language arts classes for native speakers. 

1. What do these two readings have in common with one another?
2. What do the readings, especially Honeyfield, have in common with Miller & Gildea's piece?
3. In your own experience, what has helped you most in increasing your vocabulary? Did you have to do tasks like dictionary lookup, writing sentences with new words, and memorizing definitions in your schooling? Were you taught skills for guessing word meaning from context? When you read now, what do you do when you encounter an unknown word? Over the next few days, monitor yourself while you read textbooks, novels, magazines, or newspapers. Make a note of unknown words that you encounter, and how you respond to them. Be ready to share an example or two with the class.
   

"Key Terms in Second-Language Acquisition" by VanPatten and Benati

The sections to focus on most in this reading are:

• “What is second language acquisition?”
• “Key issues in second language acquisition”
• Issue 1: “What is the initial state?”
• Issue 3: “Is there a critical period?”
• Issue 4: “What does development look like?”
• Issue 7: “What are individual differences and how do they affect acquisition?”
• Issue 8: “Does instruction make a difference?”

Questions:

1. According to the opening of this reading, what is the primary focus of SLA – the fundamental questions SLA researchers address?
2. What is interlanguage? (This is important.)
3. An early theory of SLA made the common-sense prediction that comparing a learner’s native language to the language they want to learn would be the best predictor of what the learner would learn when, what would be more difficult for the learner to learn, etc. This would lead us to believe that the learning order and the performance of learners having different L1’s would be very different; for instance, a speaker of a non-affixing language like Chinese learning, say, Spanish (a heavily suffixing language) should have a very different learning curve from that of a native speaker of German (which has plenty of affixes). Do the facts that VanPatten & Benati present support this theory? Go beyond a simple yes or no; briefly note the facts which either support or refute the theory.
4. Compare the O’Grady & Cho readings on 1st-language acquisition (all 3) with VanPatten & Benati’s description of facts and theories about SLA. Do you find any significant similarities? List however many you can find.
5. Most people probably believe that it’s a good idea to take classes or get some kind of instruction to learn a new language. What have been your beliefs about this? Did reading VanPatten & Benati have any effect on your beliefs?
6. VanPatten & Benati outline several traits of an individual that can promote or hinder success in SLA. Most of you have studied another language at some point. Do you recognize any of those traits in yourself? Which (if any) helped you? Which (if any) hindered?  
   
   

"Codeswitching" by Rebecca Wheeler and Rachel Swords

1. What does it mean for a person to codeswitch?
2. How would you define dialect prejudice? Why does dialect prejudice exist?
3. Describe the teaching technique called contrastive analysis.
4. Wheeler and Swords write, "It can be a very damaging human experience for an AAVE speaking child to learn Mainstream American English while the teacher dismisses AAVE as broken and error-filled." What kind of damage do you think can result from such treatment?
5. What positive changes and outcomes resulted from Swords' adoption of the contrastive analysis technique in her third-grade class?

"Language Diversity and Learning" by Lisa Delpit

1. What similarities do you find between this reading and Wheeler and Swords ("Codeswitching")?
2. Delpit gives numerous examples of real-life situations involving students who spoke non-standard dialects. Choose three of these that made a strong impression on you. Why did Delpit include each of these examples? What lesson did she intend for the reader to learn from it?
3. Think back to Gee's ideas about mainstream and nonmainstream discourse (see the bottom of this page). What are some specific ways in which the differences between a child's nonmainstream home discourse and the dominant (school) discourse present obstacles to learning and to the teacher/child relationship?
4. What are some specific things a teacher could do to serve children of nonmainstream communities better?

1. Nieto notes that many parents, educators and others who oppose bilingual education sincerely have children's best interests at heart. She insists that they are, nevertheless, wrong. What are her arguments?
2. Nieto brings in the issue of socioeconomic class. How does class enter into outcomes of education for children who speak Spanish? Cite Nieto's specific examples.
3. According to Nieto, children whose first language is not English need "a minimum of five to seven years to develop the level of English proficiency needed to succeed academically". Yet, California law permits only one year of education that uses the student's primary language even minimally, under ordinary cirumstances. What do you think of this?
4. According to Nieto, which type or types of bilingual programs work best?
5. State three or four similarities between Nieto's position on how to deal with language-minority children and the position advocated in class and in the readings concerning minority-dialect children (children who speak nonstandard English).

•  A child’s primary discourse consists of not just the child’s language, but of their whole way of being in their home community: socially appropriate behavior; how adults and older children respond to (un)acceptable behavior; what the home community’s values are (family ties? economic success? knowing a lot about the world at large? helping others? strong self-discipline? cooperation? competitiveness? responsibility for taking care of others? religion? hard work? shopping? hobbies?  handwork/crafts/music, etc. as ways of creating an individual identity and building self-worth? ways of celebrating important events? acquiring material goods? reading as a leisure activity? spending time outdoors or in nature? sports as a form of community or subgroup bonding? prioritizing work, family, friends, community obligations? attention to health? gender roles? What is considered ‘work’, and what ‘fun’? Is having fun (entertainment, leisure activities) a major value of the community? Tolerance of groups unlike themselves? Attitudes about ‘proper’ and ‘improper’ language? Open discussion of values, events, experiences among family members? Routines: is life lived on a regular schedule; is being on time important; how frequent are breaks from work, etc.)
•  With regard to language, more is involved than pronunciation of words, vocabulary, and grammar. Interactive language practices of the primary discourse can set the child up for a significant match or mismatch with the discourse of school. In the home community,
• How are children supposed to address and respond to adults?
• What kinds of questions do adults ask children? Do they "play teacher" by asking the child questions about the world, asking them to recite the alphabet, spell words, or do simple math problems? Or do they just ask questions typical of ordinary communication, such as whether the child likes something, is hungry, played with friends today, etc.?
• Are children considered conversation partners with adults, or are verbal interactions mainly sets of commands as to what to do or not do; requests from the child for wants and needs, etc.?
• Are children expected to change the way they talk (e.g., by showing greater respect) when they are talking to adults vs. when they are talking to their siblings and peers?
• Are children expected to make eye contact with adults when answering a question or otherwise addressing an adult?
• Are children expected to take the initiative in an adult/child interaction, or wait for prompting from the adult?
• Are children encouraged to display their abilities in front of others, or to "not stand out in a crowd"?
• Are children expected to talk loudly or softly? 
• Are long silences tolerated in social situations?
• Are boys and girls allowed to engage in the same kind of talk (cursing, loud talking, talking back, questioning authority, etc.)?
• Do people talk while engaged in other activities, such as housework, watching TV, reading a book or newspaper, etc.?
• Are all types of interruption considered impolite?
• Do adults issue commands directly to children, by saying, for example, "Stop that!", "Sit down at the table and eat your dinner right now!", "Do what your daddy says or go to time-out!"; or do they issue commands indirectly, for instance, "You shouldn't do that, sweetie. It's impolite"; "It's time for everyone to sit down and eat now"; "If you don't do what Daddy says, we might have to send you to time-out"?
• Are insults allowed between children and adults, even in play?
• How direct are people allowed to be in stating their opinions?
• What are ‘good manners’ and ‘bad manners’? Are manners important in the home community or in the child’s home?
• Children’s expectations regarding adult behaviors: caregiving, discipline, ‘refereeing’ interaction of children in groups; listening to child’s woes; acceptance of children’s explanations / reasons / excuses
• Appropriateness of children correcting adults or adults correcting children
• All children, regardless of socioeconomic status, grow up with a primary discourse. A primary discourse is essentially the same thing as a culture, as Gee uses the term. Children cannot survive as human beings without a discourse, except as 'wild children' such as have occasionally been discovered in past eras.
• A secondary discourse is any discourse that is not the primary discourse. 2ndary discourses may involve as much learning as acquisition (that is, as much conscious learning, including via being taught by others, as in ‘picking up’ rules for behavior by observation, trial, and error). Secondary discourses may involve activities outside the home, as varied as youth religious clubs and street gangs, a community chorus or a soccer team. School and the working world it is supposed to prepare children for is a secondary discourse; Gee’s broad definition of literacy is mastery of a secondary discourse, but for our purposes we focus especially on the discourse of the school.