Blog Summary 9: Down Syndrome & Grammar

by: Brandon Trammel

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In this particular study three children with Down’s Syndrome were tested on their language and grammar comprehension in comparison to typically normal children. In the study the children with Down syndrome produce their first 10 words on average 12 months later than typically developing children. This suggests that once the children with Down syndrome get going with the production of the language, they in fact show a similar pattern as typically developing children in the early stages of grammar. Although I know little to nothing about those who have Down’s Syndrome after reading the results of the experiment I was somewhat surprised. I assumed that children with Down’s Syndrome would be slow to catch up on language and grammar rules, but would not have thought once these children grasped the rules of grammar would have the ability to learn it just as well as a typical students. Although I am surprised by these findings I also feel that this cannot be used as valid information for all children with Down’s Syndrome. The study was only done on three children which is a small ratio when being compared to all who have the disease.

Blog Summary 12: "What Makes Texting Distinctive"

Text slang to our youth seems to be new, but according to "What Makes Texting Distinctive", it has been around for nearly over a hundred years. The author starts the chapter off with informing the reader that six media commentators will be describe for a better understanding. Pictorgrams and logograms, these are the most noticeable of text orthography symbols, for instance we recognize" @" as "at", or "2" as "to". These are considered logograms according to the author. In logograms the punctuation is important not the visual. The author goes on to describe emotions (or smileys), where the meaning comes from the shape and symbols. In the chapter hieroglyphics are not compared to orthographics. The author defines rebus as representing pictures that are used for sounds of words instead of the object it refers to. Initialism is another form of a orthographic. It means the reduction of words. This is one of the second most noticeable feature of texting. Sometimes intialism is called acronyms. In most forms of texting people often use intialism for instance "GF" is for girlfriend or "W/E" is for weekend. Another form of texting people use but not as often as the other forms is "omitted letters", most of the time this is used when texters is to lazy to type out the entire word. An example would be "xlnt" which means excellent. Nonstandard spellings are misspelled on purpose for instance "luv" or "fone". Texting is a major factor in most people everyday life. These things are so common that people don't even realize they do it.

Blog Summary 10: Are Twins Language-Delayed???

by: Paul Schmidt

The responses are due on Friday, Sept. 24th, by midnight.
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Are Twins Delayed in Development Language? (Jennifer Ganger)

In this poorly written article that is full of grammar and spelling mistakes, Jennifer Ganger lists a few conclusions of experiments that have all been done prior to her research. The entire article is about twins, more specifically, if twins are delayed in the development of language. Ganger brings up several cases where a certain line could be placed to the ages where twins were delayed compared that of singletons, this age was 2 years old. Any other age that was tested in the numerous studies were found to be a very slim margin for the male twins. But the females on the other hand were of equal stature if not higher than that of their singleton counterpart in that same age group. A lot about what is said in these studies based upon genetics is that the ability to develop language depends a lot upon the weight of the child at birth, this being true with test scores and experiments done by two separate groups in 1986. Also parents have played a role in this debate on how much attention each twin receives and whether or not they are able to get one on one interaction with a parent and just a twin. I have grown up next to a set of twins and from personal experience I can say that there has not been a single moment where either of them seemed to be delayed in the language category, both of whom were in the top 10 of my graduating class. The debate rolls on; do you believe that twins are delayed in developmental language?

Blog Summary 8: A Systematic Approach to Grammar Instruction

Responses are due on Wednesday, Sept. 22nd, at midnight.
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A Systematic Approach to Grammar Instruction,
by Sonya Clark

The teacher in this article had one goal in mind, and it was to improve her students writing skills. She searched endlessly to provide the students with the help they needed. So, she started a two year grammar sequence program. The program started when the students were in the seventh grade and continued until the end of their eighth grade year. Each month the students covered a new topic and reviewed previous material. I was amazed at how the teacher used all the stages in the learning cycle, explain, extend, evaluate, explore, and engage. She made her students incorporate what they had learned into their own writing. Also, she allowed them to edit their peers writing, so they would become better at recognizing simple mistakes that are made. The teacher always provided the students with practice material, mainly from her own writing. At the end of the program, the teacher evaluated the students progress. One student told the teacher how she was able to apply what she had learned and was able to fix the mistakes she made in the past. If I was a teacher or was interested in teaching, I would follow the model this teacher provided because it explains and give details on how to help students improve their writing!

Blog Summary 7: The order of words. By Ken Macrorie

Kaleb Cook.

The way that a sentence is created and the way the words are assorted is of great importance to our grammar. In the American grammatical system words like he, she, or they preceded by prepositions signal their relationship by changing the object form (Him, Her, or Them). Kids develop an understanding of this by the time they are seven or eight. The order and patterns that professional writers have issues with editors because they find little that is grammatically weak, however there are weaknesses confined in the American grammatical System. I learned that they frequently involve using word order, a lack of clear signal by pronouns, and finally verbs that don't find and signal out nouns that they belong to. In the professional business of writing you need to develop an ear for normal word order and respect that order. If you as a writer continually scramble that order, you can confuse your readers rather than surprise them. Vary the normal pattern, but only do this sparingly. Do not forget to create a pattern of expectation in the first place. Another aspect of sentence word order, is the idea of tack-on sentencing. These are properly shown by two professional writers, both Walter Lippaman and Ivan Turgenev. " Each of us lives and works on a small part of the earth's surface, moves in a small circle and of their acquaintances knows only a few intimately". -Walter. " There were several ladies on board, quite remarkably beautiful or good-looking, most of them, alas, now dead". -Ivan Tugenev. Most beginning writers need to force themselves into to tacking-on, however the habit comes easy to many persons. Good writers learn to master grammar to be more able to control their words, and form meaning. Dangling modifiers fall under this idea of sentence understanding as well. One other thing to remember is that the readers understandable interpretation of the sentence is probably that which refers to plan, the whole immediately preceding it. These little matters of reference and agreement are the higgledy-piggledy of grammar. More crucial matters exist. When you think about the word order, the way words come together in phrases and words,(pieces, hunks, segments, absolutes,whatever you call them at the moment, think of how you may control it to bring your writing alive.This is a little to know about word orders, and becoming a professional writer.

Blog Summary 6: Teaching Standard English as Foreign Language to Ebonics Speakers?

This article talks about a teacher who was transferred to a school called Prescott in Oakland, California. The school is not only notorious for having troubled youth, but it also has a student body that is ethnically diverse. While teaching at Prescott, the instructor focuses on creating a series of learning strategies to help African American students understand the English language better. One method in particular was using Ebonics to help increase the student's competency level in understanding English in general. Prescott also has a SEP program that helps teachers to understand the cultures of their students and using them as a learning tool to help them do better in the classroom. In your opinion do you feel that using Ebonics in the classroom is an effective learning tool for schools that are ethnically diverse?

Blog Summary 5: How Can Speakers of AAE become SE Writers?

This reading is about how to teach children who grow up surrounded by AAE how to become SE writers. The reading goes over many different techniques such as the traditional approach, the second dialect approach, the dialect awareness approach, and many more. The chapter also goes into detail on how to instruct using each approach and asseses each one as well.

Blog Summary 4: What is "AAE"

AAE is referred to as “African American English”. AAE has also been known as “broken” English or slang. There are different views on AAE. Some believe that people who use AAE language is “lazy” or “illiterate”. The reason that some people believe that they are “lazy’” or can be mistaken for an illiterate is because people leave out the word endings and do not properly enunciate the words correctly. For example, “store” would become “sto” “going” becomes “gon’’. Other view people who use AAE as a multicultural language, because it is known worldwide and it is how most African Americans communicate. AAE originated from slavery, it became a language because that is how the slave communicated since they were not allowed to go to school. AAE came from how slaves communicate to everyday language. But, do not get AAE, and SAE (Standard American English) confused. It is very similar, because they both do not have a spoken rule, but in writing it is different. Most people are more familiar with SAE because it is how we write, but AAE is just a language we use to communicate. We can use AAE in writing, but it will not be “correct” English. Instead of people seeing AAE as an incorrect usage of proper English, we should view it as just another way people communicate with each other.

Blog Summary 3: Chinese Learners of English

Mark J. Alves, explains that the roll of a pronoun in Asia is very different than the European languages. In Asia common proper nouns are often used when pronouns would be considered appropriate in European languages. According to the author Southeast Asia's "pronoun" systems are made up of terms of address having to do with family relations. Asian ESL students may also struggle with prepositions because they are "words which show a relationship between a noun or pronoun and some other word." It would be difficult to translate and learn prepositions due to how differently pronouns are used in the two cultures.