Culture Literacy And Learning English

How can educators improve the literacy skills of students in historically underachieving urban high schools? In this timely book, the author offers a theoretical framework for the design of instruction that is both culturally responsive and subject-matter specific, rooted in examples of the implementation of the Cultural Modeling Project. Presented here, the Cultural Modeling Project draws on competencies students already have in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) discourse and hip-hop culture to tackle complex problems in the study of literature. Using vivid descriptions from real classrooms, the author describes how AAVE supported student learning and reasoning; how students in turn responded to the reform initiative; and how teachers adapted the cultural framework to the English/language arts curriculum. While the focus is on literacy and African American students, the book examines the functions of culture in facilitating learning and offers principles for leveraging cultural knowledge in support of subject matter specific to academic learning. This much-awaited book offers important lessons for researchers, school district leaders, and local practitioners regarding the complex ways that cultural knowledge is constructed and plays out in classroom life, in the life of a school, and in the life of a whole-school reform initiative.

A must-read for parents and teachers, this major bestseller reveals how cultural literacy is the hidden key to effective education and presents 5000 facts that every literate American should know. In this forceful manifesto Professor E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that children in the United States are being deprived of the basic knowledge that would enable them to function in contemporary society. They lack cultural literacy: a grasp of background information that writers and speakers assume their audience already has. Even if a student has a basic competence in the English language, he or she has little chance of entering the American mainstream without knowing what a silicon chip is, or when the Civil War was fought. An important work that has engendered a nationwide debate on our educational standards, Cultural Literacy is a required reading for anyone concerned with our future as a literate nation.

This collection argues that being aware of and reflecting on language form and language use is a powerful tool, not only in language learning, but also in wider society. It adopts an interdisciplinary stance: one chapter argues the need for Language Awareness in business contexts, while another examines the role of critical cultural awareness and Language Awareness in education as ‘bildung’. Others report on research studies in language classrooms and in teacher education. Language Awareness is interrogated from a range of perspectives such as peer interaction, teaching young learners, learner strategies and strategies for writing, online reading, and oral fluency training. The scope is global, including contributions from Canada, Germany, Iran, Japan, Spain, and the UK, and covers bilingual as well as multilingual contexts. The book will be of interest to language teachers, language teacher educators, other language professionals, and generally to the language aware. This book was originally published as a special issue of Language Awareness.

This book is a collection of essays written by young Chinese graduates who teach English in Chinese colleges and universities.

This book examines recent changes in media education and in young people’s lives, and provides an accessible set of principles on which the media curriculum should be based, with a clear rationale for pedagogic practice. David Buckingham is one of the leading international experts in the field - he has more than twenty years’ experience in media education as a teacher and researcher. This book takes account of recent changes both in the media and in young people’s lives, and provides an accessible and cogent set of principles on which the media curriculum should be based. Introduces the aims and methods of media education or 'media literacy'. Includes descriptions of teaching strategies and summaries of relevant research on classroom practice. Covers issues relating to contemporary social, political and technological developments.

Bringing together theory, research, and practice to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and white linguistic supremacy, this book provides ethnographic snapshots of how Black students navigate and negotiate their linguistic and racial identities across multiple contexts. By highlighting the counterstories of Black students, Baker-Bell demonstrates how traditional approaches to language education do not account for the emotional harm, internalized linguistic racism, or consequences these approaches have on Black students' sense of self and identity. This book presents Anti-Black Linguistic Racism as a framework that explicitly names and richly captures the linguistic violence, persecution, dehumanization, and marginalization Black Language-speakers endure when using their language in schools and in everyday life. To move toward Black linguistic liberation, Baker-Bell introduces a new way forward through Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy, a pedagogical approach that intentionally and unapologetically centers the linguistic, cultural, racial, intellectual, and self-confidence needs of Black students. This volume captures what Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy looks like in classrooms while simultaneously illustrating how theory, research, and practice can operate in tandem in pursuit of linguistic and racial justice. A crucial resource for educators, researchers, professors, and graduate students in language and literacy education, writing studies, sociology of education, sociolinguistics, and critical pedagogy, this book features a range of multimodal examples and practices through instructional maps, charts, artwork, and stories that reflect the urgent need for antiracist language pedagogies in our current social and political climate.

Distinguished multiculturalist Sonia Nieto speaks directly to current and future teachers in this thoughtful integration of a selection of her key writings with creative pedagogical features. Offering information, insights, and motivation to teach students of diverse cultural, racial, and linguistic backgrounds, examples are included throughout to illustrate real-life dilemmas about diversity that teachers face in their own classrooms; ideas about how language, culture, and teaching are linked; and ways to engage with these ideas through reflection and collaborative inquiry. Designed for upper-undergraduate and graduate-level students and professional development courses, each chapter includes critical questions, classroom activities, and community activities suggesting projects beyond the classroom context. Language, Culture, and Teaching • explores how language and culture are connected to teaching and learning in educational settings; • examines the sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts of language and culture to understand how these contexts may affect student learning and achievement; • analyzes the implications of linguistic and cultural diversity for classroom practices, school reform, and educational equity; • encourages practicing and preservice teachers to reflect critically on their classroom practices, as well as on larger institutional policies related to linguistic and cultural diversity based on the above understandings; and • motivates teachers to understand their ethical and political responsibilities to work, together with their students, colleagues, and families, for more socially just classrooms, schools, and society. Changes in the Third Edition: This edition includes new and updated chapters, section introductions, critical questions, classroom and community activities, and resources, bringing it up-to-date in terms of recent educational policy issues and demographic changes in the U.S. and beyond. The new chapters reflect Nieto’s current thinking about the profession and society, especially about changes in the teaching profession, both positive and negative, since the publication of the second edition of this text.

This book examines the linkage between literacy and linguistic diversity, embedding them in their social and cultural contexts. It illustrates that a more complete understanding of literacy among diverse populations and in multicultural societies requires attention to issues of literacy per se as well as to improving an educational process that has relevance beyond members of majority cultures and linguistic groups. The focus of the book is on the social and cultural contexts in which literacy develops and is enacted, with an emphasis on the North American situation. Educators and researchers are discovering that cognitive approaches, while very valuable, are insufficient by themselves to answer important questions about literacy in heterogeneous societies. By considering the implications of family, school, culture, society, and nation for literary processes, the book answers the following questions. In a multi-ethnic context, what does it mean to be literate? What are the processes involved in becoming and being literate in a second language? In what ways is literacy in a second language similar and in what ways is it different from mother-tongue literacy? What factors must be understood to better describe and facilitate literacy acquisition among members of ethnic and linguistic minorities? What are some current approaches that are being used to accomplish this? These are vital questions for researchers and educators in a world that has a large number of immigrants, a variety of multi-ethnic and multi-lingual societies, and an increasing degree of multinational activity. Beyond addressing applied concerns, attending to these questions can provide new insights into basic aspects of literacy.

This is the story of a white high school English teacher, Bob Fecho, and his students of color who mutually engage issues of literacy, language, learning, and culture. Through his journey, Fecho presents a method of “critical inquiry” that allows students and teachers to take intellectual and social risks in the classroom to make meaning together and, ultimately, to transform literacy education. Features the voices, beliefs, and struggles of urban adolescents and their teachers. “This is a book about what it means to care about both who you teach and what you teach. It is a book about what it means to understand the broader social purposes of schooling and education as possible sites for the advancement of human liberation and the cultivation of democracy. Is this English? Probably. But it is also life.” —From the Foreword by Gloria Ladson-Billings “At a time when most discussion of literacy focuses on either high-stakes tests or phonics, it is refreshing to read Bob Fecho’s journey in doing critical inquiry, crossing cultural borders, and engaging passionately and totally with high school students in an urban school.” —Sonia Nieto, author of What Keeps Teachers Going? “Issues of race and struggles with self-identity eloquently permeate this text. This book is a fascinating read about life in a small urban learning community. I highly recommend it to others.” —Jennifer Obidah, University of California, Los Angeles

Fully updated for the twenty-first century, The New First Dictionary of Cultural Literacy lists essential facts in twenty-one subject areas to promote successful learning in kids. Child education expert E. D. Hirsch Jr. cuts through the wealth of information available today to highlight terms that a child should be familiar with by the end of sixth grade. With nearly 3,000 concise definitions and including 250 new entries (like Harry Potter, centaurs, northern lights, and World Series), this popular sourcebook makes it easy for children to become literate in mythology, literature, U.S. history, science and technology, and more.