Research

What Happened to Language in the Language Arts?

Educators are in near universal agreement that finding ways to incorporate students’ everyday use of language in the classroom is a worthy goal. The argument often revolves around making the curriculum more relevant and, thus, more engaging for youth. Rarely, however, do educators ask students to analyze and reflect on their own uses of language, particularly not in classrooms with a majority of English learners.

In a recent study, two UC Davis School of Education researchers found that having students focus on their use of language improves their understanding of the need to adjust language for different audiences and increases their confidence in the use of academic language.

Danny C. Martinez, assistant professor of education, and Elizabeth Montaño, lecturer/supervisor in the School’s Teacher Education program, facilitated a two-year participatory study led by seventh and eighth grade students and their teacher at a small urban charter school. The student body was 97 percent “Hispanic or Latino.”

In the first year, students were asked to write a persuasive essay, adjusting the language for two different audiences: 1) “friend, family or peer” and 2) “professional.” In the second year, students made short films documenting themselves using language in different social contexts.

Very early in the project, the researchers realized that there is little discussion about language itself in English language arts classes. “It became clear that in language arts instruction, we simply don’t talk about language enough,” they wrote.

According to the researchers, this is an important oversight for a number of reasons. First, the focus on standardized testing limits the language use teachers reinforce in the classroom. Second, students, particularly students who don’t speak English as their first language and who live in environments with rich linguistic complexity, internalize the dominant culture’s
negative judgment of non-standard English. The result can be students unable to take control of the language they use or to leverage their use of language for academic success.

Students’ reflections in this study indicate a sophisticated understanding among the students of how language varies depending on audience and how that understanding can improve their verbal and written use of language for school.

“Youth not only took translation beyond the literate purposes of translation,” wrote the researchers. “They came to understand their translation as part of a larger set of skills that were meaningful for academic purposes and for navigating their diverse communities.”

Martinez and Montaño will present “What Happened to Language in the Language Arts? Latina/o Middle School Youth on Language” at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association on Saturday, April 5.

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