Sociocultural Issues Within The Classroom

Language plays a significant role in defining who we are. It is a method of communication in a structured and conventional way. “Language reinforces feelings of social superiority or inferiority; it creates insiders and outsiders” (p. 242) states Robert MacNeil (2012) in his article “English Belongs to Everybody”.

Language is a highly significant aspect of aboriginal culture. Individual tribes each have their own unique language and an extremely high importance is placed on handing down stories from generation to generation. There is a lot that can be learnt from aboriginal culture and their use of language and applied to our use of language in modern day Australia. As technology becomes more and more entrenched in our every day lives and how we educate future generations, we distance ourselves from the ways previous generations have used language. In Aboriginal culture stories and lessons from the past have been passed down through multiple generations without losing their meaning in translation.

The teaching resource selected to support diverse literacy and language learning in a grade one classroom is a children’s book ‘I’m Australian Too’ written by Mem Fox and illustrated by Ronojoy Ghosh (Fox, M. (2017) ‘I’m Australian Too’ Australia; Scholastic Australia). The book is available for purchase both online and at ‘Readings’ stores in Hawthorn, Carlton, Malvern and St Kilda for $19.99. It can also be accessed as an audio copy from http://memfox.com/books/im-australian-too/. The book details all the multiple cultural identities that can be found across Australia. It poetically details that no matter where our families come from, or the hardships that may have faced, we can all find a home in Australia. The resource is useful in

Sociolect is defined as the variation in language depending on the social status of different people. In each city of the world, big or small, there lies a separation in the class of people depending on their economic status. In Australia too we have people who are economically very strong and people who are economically very weak. People who are rich often speak the English which reflects their good education and the social status. On the other hand people of the low economic status often don’t share the same standard of English.

To me a discourse community is a close-knit group that shares the same interests and use writing as a main concept for communication. writing as a main concept for communication. Swales, linguist and author of “The Concept of Discourse Community”, further explained discourse by attributing specific characteristics to them. For the purposes of this essay, these are the relevant descriptions. “A discourse community has a broadly agreed upon set of goals” (Swales, 471), “A discourse community has acquired a specific lexis” (473), and “a discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise” (473). The discourse communityI have chosen to discuss in this essay is the Army ROTC at University of Memphis..

A discourse community is a commonly seen, but rarely identified language phenomenon. These communities can be found within any people group and in a variety of settings. Discourse communities often are defined as a group of individuals who share “a broadly agreed upon set of common public goals [have] mechanisms of intercommunication among its members,” “uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback,” makes use of “one or more genres” that help the group achieve its shared goals. The group has also “acquired some specific lexis,” and has a healthy relationship between novices and experts (Swales 795). Discourse communities are groups of people who employ specialized terms and procedures to accomplish their particular ambitions. In order to identify these groups the observer must pay attention to the use of language within these communities. Language is a refined yet powerful means of communication. In order to analyze what a discourse community is, one must first determine the utility of language within that organization. The Starbucks baristas are one of the many unrecognized discourse communities. Starbucks has a special term for their employees who compose beverages: barista. Borrowed from the Italian for bartender, a barista is a person who creates and serves varieties of different coffee. The baristas are a unique discourse community because their goal is to be efficient and excellent through silent communication in

Language is an extensively complex topic. To effectively engage in a variety of social contexts one must be well versed in both the concept of 'Discourse' (so capitalised because of James Gee's discrimination between 'discourse' as "connected stretches of language that makes sense" and 'Discourse,' as a concept made up of various discourses as described by David Green, 2006, pp. 3 ), and the basic principles and 'codes' (Bernstein, 1960, as cited by Green, 2006) of the Discourse appropriate to each situation one encounters. A deficient working knowledge of the situational discourse leaves you vulnerable as what Green continues on to describe as an 'outsider' and therefore subject to being classified and treated as inferior. It is important to avoid a reflectively tyrannical system occurring within the classroom setting, as it leads to devaluing of individual children's culture and home Discourse through the process of placing them in direct conflict with the institutional school Discourse (Gee, 1990, Michaels 1981, as cited by Green, 2006).

The recent proposal for a common national curriculum across all Australian States and territories has sparked large debate across the education board. This has left many Australians questioning the future direction of education in Australia. Stephen Buckle, principal at Narrenwood Secondary College, an Anonymous writer and a cartoon by Jobs provide strong opposing views on the suggested common curriculum. Buckle’s “Why should schooling change at every State border?”, reasonably contends that because all Australians are one, an individuals education should not be determined by where they live. She calls on the “predictable” choices made by State Education Ministers to be replaced by a common curriculum consistent across

There are numerous diverse roles that language can participate on a child’s life and development, whether it be throughout the roles that persuade their growth and knowledge of language, the way they are able to establish the many dissimilar forms of language, their knowledge of diverse and standization of their own language as well as others and the impact culture has on a child. The countless roles that language may have on a child could be their understanding of the structural system of language, and they why this shapes their personal and social outcomes. We are able to determine the many different varieties and forms of is through both written and spoken words and having the ability to be able to understand Australians contextual language.

　　　　Language is an essential part of our daily lives. Language is used to communicate with other people to meet our needs and satisfy our understandings. Everyone uses one language or another. Some have an advantage and are able to use

According to Fairclough (2010), in Critical Discourse Analysis, language is viewed as a social practice because it shapes and is shaped by society.

A fundamental role for teachers is to ensure students are engaged in the classroom. A students educational outcome can be positively influenced by a teacher who takes the time to get to know their fund of knowledge, particularly in regards to the student’s cultural background and use of language (Bremmer & Scull, 2016, p. 205). As Australian classrooms become increasingly multicultural (Williams, 2011, p.21), with approximately one-fifth of Australians speaking a language other than English at home (ABS, 2017, para. 7), so to do the Englishes used by students. Teachers may experience students arriving at school with limited knowledge of the Australian English language due to only speaking it as a second language, or sometimes not at all, in

Language is a powerful communication tool the user holds to express their individual identity and ingroup solidarity. The use of Standard English helps to direct this, as it acts as the structure of communication, ingroup and between speech communities to effectively present a standard for mutual understanding. Outside of Standard English comes the use of slang, netspeak and textspeak, which helps to develop and enrich the language, as well as evolve with contemporary Australia and its fast paced lifestyle. Using the Standard all the time would be exclusive of the linguistic freedom formed by the world beyond Standard English with varying ethnolects, but is also a

Language is crucial in an elementary classroom. Language is used in every aspect of the teaching realm whether it is speaking, reading, or writing. There is some sort of communication present at all times. Immediately upon thinking of language within an elementary classroom the first thought is generally the subject of language arts. Within this domain students learn how to read, write, and speak. In reality, there is not a single subject in elementary school in which a student is not using language in some way. Because of this we, as teachers, need to be precise and predetermine what it is we teach and how we teach it. Many instructors lean towards

Therefore, the role of discourse must be taken into account for comprehending lexical chunks. The study of language beyond the level of sentence refers to discourse analysis (Yule, 2006). Any discourse is heavily based on formulaic sequences and recurrent word combinations (Schmitt, 2004). Erman and Warren (2000) reported that 58.3% of spoken register and 52.3% of written register employ different sorts of word combinations. Learning how to use fixed phrases helps students learn the conventions of a particular discipline (Cortes, 2004). Consequently, Hyland (2009) posits that specificity is a significant factor in discourse analysis especially in the last twenty years. Each discipline has its own specific communicative conventions to look at the world (Hyland &Hamp-Lyons, 2002). Functional and cognitive linguistics together with usage-based theories of language believe that constructions are the fundamental units of language representation which are conventionalized in the speech community and established as language knowledge in the user’s mind (Goldberg, 2006; Langacker, 1987; Tomasello, 2003).For instance, Halliday's (1989) study showed that written register employs greater nominalization, impersonalization, and lexical diversity in contrast to spoken one. In the same way, Hyland and Tse (2007) in their research demonstrated that terminology differs across disciplines and the same words have