Qualitative measures
Teacher codes
- Jennifer,
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
I am unsure of what is meant by the home English category. According to Baker, home English is what is spoken at home or for recent immigrants, what
they learn from their peers. Maybe a linguist could identify anything unusual and unique about the way my family communicates, but I would say it's the same
thing as academic English.
You brought a couple of excellent points. If you remember from the Fillmore & Snow article, they point out that the students who make the best transition from
home to school have a language that matches most directly with the school variety. That is, the home language and school language are virtually the SAME
dialect. The students who have the most trouble are the ones whose home language does not match the school language. On the flip side, (again as pointed
out in F &S) teachers generally come from this pool of language speakers. In other words, teachers are mostly monolingual in both language, dialect, and
culture. Several readings discuss this point and how it affects teacher/student relationships. How do you think this monolingual phenomenon might affect
teaching to non-mainstream speakers as well as second language learners? Feel free to use examples from the readings to support answer.
Lisa