Double Entry Journal #10

1. What are the features of the forms of language that are spoken in a home environment that align with academic varieties of language?

Some of the features of language spoken at home that are similar to academic language are:

• Turning an everyday event into a literary story. (Announcing the beginning and ending of the story and an overview of what the story would be about)
• Adopting a frame that mimics a story book reading. (You can read aloud in your story book, etc.)
• Offering a title for the story. ("How the friends got unfriend.")
• Using syntactic structures that are typical of literary books. (Once upon a time)
• Using a lot of literary sorts of repetition and parallelism. (Boys play transformers, girls play with Cabbage Patches and "punching, pulling, banging)
• Using sympathetic fallacy. (Fight between the boys and girls is followed by the dark sky)

2. What are the features of Leona's specialized form of language?

Some of the features of Leona's specialized form of language are the use of vernacular language. She grouped her lines of her story into stanzas where each line had a parallel structure with other lines in the stanza and o match them in content. She also used complex parallelism, repetition, clear structure, generic summary statements, and evaluation.

3. Why is Leona's specialized form of language not accepted in school?

Leona's specialized form of language is not accepted in schools because this form of language is not what many teachers are used to listening to. Many teachers are only concerned with listening to the language that they are expecting and used to listening to. They do not realize that the form of language that Leona is using is a form of language that many students at this age don't even understand. 

4. Explain the contradiction between the research conducted by Snow et al. (1998) and the recommendations made by Snow et al. (1998).

The research that was conducted by Snow et al. (1998) says that they gap between the blacks and whites in reading test scores was beginning to close significantly between the 1960s and 1980s. However, the recommendations made by Snow et al. (1998) suggests that the improvement of reading test scores was higher than the phonemic awareness training.

5. What other factors besides early skills training will make or break good readers?

The other factors that will make or break good readers other than the early skills training include engaging and exciting forms of language. Many students become poor readers because the types of literacy that students are made to read are not engaging to the students. Students need to be able to relate to the material that they are reading.

6. Why do some children fail to identify with, or find alienating, the "ways with words" taught in school?

Many students struggle to identify the ways with words taught within the schools because this language is much different than the language they are used to hearing within their homes. Students listen and gain literary knowledge within their homes at young ages. Once they begin school, the language completely changes and they begin to feel alienated and singled out.