Understanding Language Use in the Classroom: Including Teaching Materials for College Educators

By Susan J. Behrens

It is clear that a proper understanding of what academic English is and how to use it is crucial for success in college, and yet students face multiple obstacles in acquiring this new 'code', not least that their professors often cannot agree among themselves on a definition and a set of rules. Understanding Language Use in the Classroom aims to bring the latest findings in linguistics research on academic English to educators from a range of disciplines, and to help them help their students learn and achieve. In this expanded edition of the original text, college educators will find PowerPoint presentations and instructor materials to enhance the topics covered in the text. Using these additional resources in the classroom will help educators to engage their students with this crucial, but frequently neglected, area of their college education; and to inform students about the unexamined linguistic assumptions we all hold, and that hold us back. You can find additional materials on the Resources tab of our website.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Release date: Apr 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781783099801

Susan J. Behrens

Susan J. Behrens is Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, and Director of the Center for Teaching Innovation and Excellence, Marymount Manhattan College, New York, USA. She contributes weekly lessons on writing and English composition to The New York Times in Education (nytimesineducation.com). Her other publications include Grammar: A Pocket Guide (Routledge 2010) and Language in the Real World: An Introduction to Linguistics (with Judith A. Parker, Routledge 2010).

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Understanding Language Use in the Classroom

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Understanding Language Use in the Classroom

Including Teaching Materials for

College Educators

Susan J. Behrens

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS

Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/BEHREN9795

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017054915

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-178309-979-5 (hbk)

ISBN-13: 978-178309-978-8 (pbk)

Multilingual Matters

UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA.

Website: www.multilingual-matters.com

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Copyright © 2018 Susan J. Behrens.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd.

Printed and bound in the US by Edwards Brothers Malloy, Inc.

Contents

Author Biography

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Overview and Structure of the Book

College Students Failing to Learn

The Role of Language

A Linguistic Approach to Pedagogy

Structure of the Book

Introduction to this Expanded Edition

Ways to Read this Book

 Part 1: The Role of Academic English in Higher Education

1   Linguistic Obstacles to Better Teaching and Learning

An Urgent Problem in Higher Education

Language at the Core of Education

Obstacles to Mastering Academic English

Invisible criteria

First-year college students and relationship to language

English language learners and non-standard English users

Computer-mediated communication/texting

Lack of smooth transition to college

Teachers’ perceptions and expectations about academic English

2   Examining Academic English: Form and Function

Definitions

Secondary vs. Post-secondary Language Demands

Reading and note-taking

The five-paragraph essay

Approaches to smoothing the transition to college

Role of Language in College Readiness

Writing and reading

Awareness of expectations

Role of Language in College by Modalities

Academic English by Discipline

A Caveat: Academic English and Standard English

3   Linguistics and Pedagogy

Linguistics in Primary, Middle and Secondary Education

Brief Review of the Grammar Wars

Grammar Controversy Remains

From Grammar to Metaknowledge of Language

 Part 2: The Linguistic Conversations

4   Introducing the Conversations: Linguistic Principles

Standard and Non-standard/Linguistic Markedness

Formality and style

Units of language

5   Word Formation/Morphology

6   Word Meaning/Semantics

Instructor Guidance Material

Lesson 1: ‘The First Lesson, Literally’: Words

Change Meaning

Lesson 2: ‘Slang Should Know its Place’

7   Grammatical Markers/Morphosyntax

8   Grammar and Punctuation/Syntax

Instructor Guidance Material

Lesson 3: ‘Texting and Literacy Don’t Mix’

9   Narrative Structure/Discourse

Instructor Guidance Material

Lesson 4: ‘Such Rude Talkers!’: Conversational Style Clashes

Lesson 5: ‘Do You Speak Woman?’

10 Pronunciation/Phonology

Instructor Guidance Material

Lesson 6: Light or Right? Three or Tree? Sheep or Ship? Native language-influenced English

Lesson 7: ‘New Yawk Tawk’: The New York City ‘R’

11 Voice Quality and Speech Melody/Prosody

Instructor Guidance Material

Lesson 8: ‘That Vocal Fry Says It All’: The Voices of

Young Women

Lesson 9: ‘Do They Sound Gay?’

Part 3: Study Sheets: Review Materials

  for More Conversations

A: Backformations

B: Common Derivational Morphemes

C: Common Word Conversions

D: Jargon/Words with Special Meanings

E: Idiomatic Use of Prepositions

F: Pronouns and the Case System

G: Ambiguous, Vague and Inconsistent Pronouns

H: Punctuation/Apostrophes and Commas

I: Subject-Verb Agreement Issues

J: Modifier Problems

K: Tense vs. Voice

L: Texting Features

M: Formality Continuum/Style

N: Transitional Expressions

O: Phonological Patterns and Processes

P: Acoustic Characteristics of Speech/Word Stress

Appendix

Glossary

References

Index

Author Biography

Susan J. Behrens holds a PhD in linguistics from Brown University in the USA. She is Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Marymount Manhattan College, a director of the Marymount Center for Teaching Innovation and Excellence (with Katie LeBesco) and an associate at the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College. Her books include Language in the Real World: An Introduction to Linguistics (edited with Judith A. Parker) and Grammar: A Pocket Guide. She is the director and producer of the documentary ‘The Three Rs: Representation of Language in College, Reality of Language, and Realignment of Expectations’. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, the writer Tony Sarowitz.

Acknowledgments

This book is for Cindy Mercer and Ann Jablon: my sisters in teaching, ­linguistics and friendship.

Love and thanks to my husband Tony Sarowitz; supportive friends and colleagues Rebecca Sperling, Katie LeBesco, Peter Naccarato, Magda Maczynska, Giovanna Chesler, Teresa Signorelli, Meg Kamowski-Shakibai, Phil Meyers, Tahneer Oksman, Jonathan Zimmerman, Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, Judith Parker, Mary Boldt, Ann Marie Tevlin Peterson, Ray Peterson, Michael Kandel, Ada Brunstein, Christiane Siebert, Don Kortlander, Peter Baker for lively grammar-talk and Lionel Shriver for US/UK comparisons; linguistics gurus Sandra Wilde and Bill Katz; the librarians at the Shanahan Library (Marymount); language in the schools friends: Kristin Denham, Anne Lobeck, Anne Charity Hudley and Christine Mallinson; Round House mathematicians Edith Starr and Mark Feighn; David Ment and Leonora Gidlund at the Municipal Archives of the City of New York/Board of Education Collection; the fine people at Multilingual Matters, including Anna Roderick, Tommi Grover, Elinor Robertson, Sarah Williams, Laura Longworth, Anandhi Bashyam (of Deanta Global Publishing Services) and thoughtful anonymous reviewers for making this a better book; everyone associated with the Three Rs film project, including my interviewees, and crew Blair Doroshwalther, Josh Broaden and Carly Schneider; research assistants Ashley Wareham, Joséphine Ancelle, Anna Crofts, Brittney Alvarez, Megan Allard, Alexandra Caroli and Alexa Johnson; participants in the focus groups; the rest of my family (Behrenses, Hills and Botts): Richard, Anna, Frank, Kate, Shirley, Ed and Jenna et al.; the Marymount Manhattan College Distinguished Chair Selection Committee; and the people who made it ­happen and kept it going: Richard Sheldon, David Podell and Judson Shaver.

Introduction

Overview and Structure of the Book

Understanding Language Use in the Classroom: A Linguistic Guide for College Educators supplies a pedagogical tool that is new to many instructors in higher education: a route to better teaching that incorporates more overt awareness of language structure and use. The field of linguistics has made great strides in understanding many aspects of the language facility, yet educators, for the most part, shy away from the findings of this discipline. Understanding Language is written for those in higher education – teachers, teachers-in-training and faculty developers – who do not have a background in linguistics but still want to understand more clearly how language works, especially the form called academic English. Language fluency is a key element in our students’ ability to learn deeply and succeed in college. This book offers the pertinent information about language in an accessible and engaging format so that educators are better supplied with the linguistic knowledge necessary to help students do just that: learn and succeed. To articulate the issues students face when it comes to academic English; to understand the linguistic context of common linguistic concerns; to work with a more overt and controlled knowledge of language structure and use, a metaknowledge: all this is essential to more effective teaching that results in deeper learning in the college setting.

This is a book for educators, especially those in the composition and humanities fields; those new to teaching and for others training for their first class; it is also for seasoned faculty who are committed to continued development of pedagogical skills. It is for those involved in faculty development and mentoring. Finally, it can be beneficial to curious first-year college students wrestling with the unfamiliar language demands ahead of them, and to upperclassmen who have gone through the years by instinct alone and want to know the full (linguistic) story of academic English. Regardless of what field of study we are engaged in, seeing language from a meta-level raises awareness, allows us to clarify expectations that are often left unstated and gives us more control over our work in the classroom.

In this introduction, I give an overview of the issues and concerns covered in this book. What then follow are three parts exploring in detail the nature of academic English, its role in the ability of our students to learn and succeed and an argument for more well-informed educators – informed in the workings of academic English.

Note that this expanded version includes additional material: nine lesson plans, each examining a commonly held assumption about how language works, each with instructor guidance material, and a glossary, all designed to bring more language knowledge into the classroom. This new material enhances the book’s conversations about language, assisting teachers who want to extend their work to include language related writing and research assignments, and to work with their students on issues of heightened language awareness.

College Students Failing to Learn

This book is timely. A college education matters. In fact, it is more important than ever in today’s world. The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U, 2011: 3) reports that the goal of a liberal education is to empower students to learn to ‘deal with complexity, diversity, and change’. Further, the report calls for greater access to this empowerment for all citizens. There is something wrong, however, with how well colleges are achieving both these goals.

Recent books such as Academically Adrift: Limited learning on college campuses (Arum & Roksa, 2011) and Higher Education? How colleges are wasting our money and failing our kids—and what we can do about it (Hacker & Dreifus, 2011) have generated many heated discussions in the academic world. These books criticize colleges and universities for the failure of students to learn. Arum and Roksa look specifically at measures of higher-order cognitive skills, such as the ability to think critically and reason out complex and abstract problems. They find that in their surveyed sample, 45% of students showed no improvement in these skills after two years of college. While a student might be learning content-course material, Arum and Roksa point out that these larger cognitive skills are the ones that translate into flexibility and adaptability in all college courses and even after graduation. The researchers have a good reason to focus on these skills: when professors are asked what they hope to achieve in their teaching, most cite critical thinking and abstract, complex thinking and reasoning ability (Hacker & Dreifus, 2011). If a large portion of students cannot gain the crucial skills that professors deem essential, they cannot reap the benefits of a

college education.

Our society as a whole also loses when college students do not learn. Delbanco (2012), author of another critique of higher education titled College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, lists what he sees as the reasons for a college education: economic gain, political democracy and an awakening of one’s senses. When students fail to learn, society is deprived of critical thinkers who can contribute as informed citizens.

The Role of Language

What role does language play in the ability of colleges to meet their goals and increase students’ rates of learning? This book argues that language plays an essential role. Those crucial skills of critical thinking, reasoning and abstract problem-solving are grounded in language ability. We cannot master these skills without being fluent in the language forms required in academia, usually called academic English. Academic English is defined by Schleppegrell (2012) as the literacy basis of all schooling, and she characterizes it as language with complex syntax and elaborate lexical items. Zwiers (2007, 2008) sees academic English as language best suited to academic thinking, which is a type of cognitive demand challenging students to articulate cause and effect, comparisons and contrasts, as well as to persuade, interpret and take multiple perspectives. And he states that academic English goes beyond vocabulary to include a wide array of linguistic devices to aid in higher-level cognitive processes. Both Schleppegrell and Zwiers consider this form of English one that needs to be learned by students. It is true that many students learn it indirectly, figuring it out on their own. (That is probably how many current educators succeeded.) However, many others fail to learn the forms appropriate to college, or do so with much frustration. This doesn’t need to be the case.

The demand for strong language skills starts early in the educational endeavor. When the National Center for Literacy Education (2013: 8) in the USA surveyed teachers from pre-kindergarten to twelfth grade, 77% of the educators, across subject areas and grades, agreed with the statement that ‘[d]eveloping students’ literacy is one of the most important parts of my job’. If we look beyond college, we find that employers identify oral and written communication skills as crucial to success in their workplace (Quible & Griffin, 2007: 33); however, these potential employers also rate college students’ skills as ‘deplorable in every area’.

While the AAC&U (2011) challenges colleges to put more emphasis on these crucial skills, educators need a better grasp of the role language plays in achieving that goal, and the forms of English identified as the key to academic success. Put yourself in a new college student’s shoes, suggests Zwiers (2008). The equivalent scenario would be if someone with a college degree found himself or herself in law school and was handed a law text to read: ‘You recognize the words, but they don’t mean what they usually do, and the sentences in the book take up half the page’ (Zwiers, 2008: 6). This new student’s chances of success have just plummeted. First-year college students feel like that: they might have succeeded in secondary school, but college is a new linguistic game.

To play that game successfully, students need more advanced linguistic equipment. It is not enough once in college, therefore, to be at ease with standard English, the form of English associated with education (Prinsloo, 2012). The English skills that seemed to work well enough in secondary school do not suffice at college, for college expands the demands on language users. For students to learn, teachers themselves need to be more linguistically informed. Unfortunately, we academics might well be too immersed in academic English ourselves to teach it well, or even be able to articulate its nature (Nathan & Petrosino, 2003). In her book about the learning obstacles that students face at college, Cox (2009: 140) sees the academic culture as embracing specific literary practices, ‘particular habits of thinking, acting, speaking, and writing that are often incomprehensible and alienating to people outside academia’. Educational development scholar Wareing (2004a: 10) says that ‘academic disciplines have their own codes [...] designed to enable communication which deals with abstract concepts, to allow a level of precision in the discussion of shared concepts’. Students need to be let in on the codes. And the stakes are high: beyond demanding mastery, ‘Academic codes also identify speakers and writers, allowing insiders to detect the exact branch of a discipline or school of thought the speaker belongs to, and have a gatekeeper function, intentionally or unintentionally keeping the uninitiated out’ (Wareing, 2004a: 11). Linguistic skills are essential to college survival: ‘Millions of bright and capable students around the world struggle in school and even give up because they lack the abilities to use language in ways that are expected in academic settings’ (Zwiers, 2008: 1).

We are all language users, but we do not all come naturally to the language used in the college classroom. That language needs to be taught.

A Linguistic Approach to Pedagogy

This book argues that those in higher education who want to facilitate student learning – teachers, teacher-trainers and students themselves – should take a page from linguistics and better understand the nature of academic English and how it works. Few educators have a linguistics background, and the intersection of linguistics and pedagogy has not yet been fully explored, especially in higher education. Linguist Jackendoff (2007: 260) sees a problem in that ‘schools of education, for the most part, teach little about the contemporary understanding of language: the structure of Mainstream English, the systematicity of dialects, the cognitive challenges faced by beginning readers and English language learners, and the sociology of language prejudice. Most classroom teachers therefore are typically left to deal with language problems in classrooms in terms of what they take to be common sense, which in many respects proves counterproductive to the educational enterprise’ (see also Behrens, 2010).

One essential resource for teachers is acquisition of a more overt knowledge about language, a meta-awareness and metavocabulary of academic English. With this knowledge, teachers then have ‘the ability to think about, reflect upon, and manipulate the forms and functions of language apart from its meaning’ (Lems et al., 2010: 31). With such metaknowledge, we can plan, monitor, evaluate and self-correct; we can teach and learn more effectively. The message of this book is that we benefit from more overt understanding of language, and of ourselves and our students as language users. Furthermore, at the college level, we need to better understand the demands of academic English. This book is a step in that direction.

Structure of the Book

This book is organized into three sections. Section I builds the case that educators at the college and university level need to be more knowledgeable about language. Section II shows how such linguistic knowledge works to improve our teaching by providing real questions that professors and college students ask about academic English and language in general, paired with succinct coverage of language structure and linguistic principles. Section III supplies sample study sheets to model work with students. An appendix containing linguistic and pedagogical resources, organized by themes, is for those who want to read more deeply about language. A companion website supplies lesson plans and guidance material so instructors can devise writing and research lessons and assignments for their own students on a variety of language issues.

Part 1, ‘The Role of Academic English in Higher Education’, comprises three chapters that examine the problems raised regarding student learning in college and argues that a controlled command of language rests at the center of better teaching and learning. Part 1 defines relevant concepts; introduces various pedagogical movements that work to infuse language sensitivity into the curriculum in primary, middle and secondary schools; and lays out the argument for more linguistically informed educators at the college and university level.

Chapter 1, ‘Linguistic Obstacles to Better Teaching and Learning’, gives an overview of the issues covered. It explains the arguments of current books that paint a bleak picture of college students failing to learn, and focuses specifically on the role of academic English, the linguistic skills that today’s students bring to college and the various challenges they face when confronted with the language demands of college-level work. Chapter 2, ‘Examining Academic English: Form and Function’, introduces readers to a detailed exploration of the English forms that academia demands, including the (often) subjective criteria associated with this discourse. It then examines how the high school-to-college transition can be a rough one for students in terms of language demands. Chapter 3, ‘Linguistics and Pedagogy’, starts with a review of a new movement happening in primary, middle and high schools, a linguistics-infused pedagogy, and supports the argument that overt knowledge about language, engaging both teachers and students, enhances learning. It also gives readers a brief overview of the so-called grammar wars – the pro and con arguments over whether grammar should be directly taught in schools – and argues that overt knowledge about language, metaknowledge, is essential to both teachers and students.

Part 2, ‘The Linguistic Conversations’, starts with a review of pertinent language terms and linguistic tenets in Chapter 4, ‘Introducing the Conversations: Linguistic Principles’, to help readers prepare for the conversations that follow. It then supplies seven chapters organized as a series of conversations: questions and concerns commonly posed about academic English by both professors and students, answered with a linguistic explanation of each phenomenon in question. Part 2 is organized by separate levels of language, so readers encounter issues of word formation/morphology in Chapter 5; word usage and meaning/semantics in Chapter 6; grammatical markers/morphosyntax in Chapter 7; grammar and punctuation/syntax in Chapter 8; narrative organizational skills/discourse in Chapter 9; pronunciation/phonology in Chapter 10; and voice quality and speech melody/prosody in Chapter 11. Each chapter addresses the top five to seven concerns of those in higher education, data drawn from interviews and focus groups I have led with professors and college students about academic English, as well as my 25 years in higher education. Each chapter ends with a discussion of how the four language modalities (writing, reading, speaking and listening skills) are related to each linguistic area and guides readers to related study sheets in Part 3.

In the new electronic version of this book, a companion website supplies teaching material that takes the learning further, and into the classroom. A set of nine lessons takes as its starting point some aspect of language that is stereotyped in the media (social and popular press), as well as in popular culture. Unexamined assumptions about language can be perpetuated by repetition in the media, often coloring how we perceive language. Stereotypes are important to examine, for they reflect general trends in thinking (Evans, 2013; Zuidema, 2005). Especially with a subject like language, with linguistics both a relatively young field and in need of more integration with education (Jackendoff, 2007), misinformation can easily spread, creating so-called facts about how language is structured and used, and about language users themselves. Enregisterment is the name linguists give to the phenomenon of a language variant taking on a social reality through a variety of discursive and metadiscursive activities (Johnstone, 2009: 160). In other words, if a stereotype is repeated often enough, it becomes socially real, and it is then maintained across time via practices that reiterate and reinforce the [variant]…and its link to the social identity associated with a particular type of persona (Johnstone, 2009: 160). To break this cycle, we need to be more aware and reflexive than we have been about where our own ideas […] come from and how they function (Johnstone, 2009: 172). Hence the addition of the lessons in the new website for the electronic version of this book.

Each lesson consists of classroom material in a PowerPoint slideshow and related instructor guidance material. The lessons aim to be accessible and adaptable, highlighting one language issue, the general popular view on that issue, and relevant linguistic scholarship in order to more closely examine the assumption. These lessons can be used in undergraduate programs in linguistics, but also communication arts and media, education, and cultural studies. The instructor does not need a degree in linguistics. Instead, the material invites both instructor and students to explore together the language issue at hand. Activities and resources in each lesson also supply ways to extend that lesson, and to customize it for a particular discipline and instructor’s expertise level. With the presented materials, instructors can design assignments that incorporate writing, research, and small group work. The questions posed can also be used for oral communication assignments.

Teaching Material: The PowerPoint material comprises accessible teaching material that can be used as is or adapted for a particular class’s interests. Each lesson starts with learning objectives and an introduction to the stereotype under discussion. A quick assessment of students’ prior knowledge and attitudes about the stereotype allows for a snapshot view of the range of beliefs in the room. A post-lesson assessment allows instructors to gauge the degree to which the lesson may have shifted students’ views. These and other embedded short exercises are designed to allow the instructor to assess the lesson’s learning goals; they also engage students by allowing them to be reflective about their own learning. Each lesson incorporates sound clips, images, and short in-class activities. The lessons can be used in any order, for each has been designed to stand alone. Instructors should also feel free to skip over any slides not pertinent to their purposes and take liberties with the slides as they see fit, e.g. consider the material presented as one approach to covering the issues.

Instructor Guidance Material: Each lesson has an associated guide that offers instructors both linguistic and pedagogical guidance in using the PowerPoint lessons, by supplying background material but also by expanding on and supplementing the material. Each instructor guide includes a discussion of the stereotype being examined, a list of learning objectives, some linguistic basics (essential, yet accessible, information), a short review of relevant research, a look at the potential evolution of this issue over time, references of sources quoted in both documents of a lesson, and a list of further exercises to extend the learning with student research, writing, discussion, and collaborative work. The material is designed to be flexible, in that it can be presented to highlight language in different contexts (gender, media, cultural, etc.). Vocabulary words in bold in the instructor material appear in a separate glossary lesson for students to quiz themselves. Cross-referring notation allows users to see the connections between lessons and plan larger units of instruction relevant to their coursework.

Part 3, ‘Study Sheets: Review Materials for More Conversations’, ­supplies sample teaching materials corresponding to the chapters in Part 2. It offers both teachers and students information and exercises that can aid mastery of each ‘problem’ language area. With the referencing system that ends each chapter in Part 2, readers can pair up a particular language issue with a series of related study sheets.

The appendix supplies more pedagogical resources, such as websites connected to each chapter, reading lists by themes, and linguistic organizations. Words in boldface throughout Parts 2 and 3 appear in the glossary.

Introduction to this Expanded Edition

Linguistic Stereotypes and Nine Lessons to Explore Assumptions about Language

Introduction

Everyone seems to have an opinion about language: Texting has ruined teenagers’ grammar; slang is infiltrating good writing; people’s accents are funny; women and men will never understand each other’s language;

et cetera.

These statements would make a great true/false quiz on the first day of a Linguistics 101 class. In fact, that is exactly how I start every semester. These sentiments are examples of folk linguistics in action (cf. Preston, 1998; Thurlow, 2006): what everyday ‘folk’ think about how language and language variation work (Evans, 2013). We all use language in some capacity, and we all have our own assumptions about what it is and how it behaves –