Language Arts

[clay dube]

Can't we build analytical and communication skills drawing upon old favorites from the Western tradition? Can't we just camp out in the neighborhoods of Shakespeare, Dickens, Hawthorne, Melville, and Fitzgerald? With the occasional field trip into the worlds of Austen, Dickinson, Brontë, Wright, Ellison, and others..... Why should we go to the bother of adding Asian literature to our courses? Don't we have enough to do just to teach kids to read and write?

[Anonymous]

I'm wondering what would be considered "asian lierature." Asian american (which could just be american)? About Asia? Which country? Asian characters? Original text? translation? Historical? Religious? Literary?

What should we be teaching our kids? How to read and write, why you and others read and write, and how words have power- I believe. I don't think English class is a place to teach culture and I know I am unable to accurately teach about the multitudes of cultures in the world. I'm taking a two week course to find out more to help me understand my students and their families better, but I am sure I will not be an expert. I'd like to find literature to suggest to my students if they have an interest so they can connect more to their learning. I may use excerpts or passages or poetry to show how different authors use the same technique or express similar ideas, but I always hate being told what to teach- especially if I feel I don't have to knowledge to teach it truthfully and well.

[Anonymous]

While I like strolling along the streets of Shakespeare and Fitzgerald, I think that teaching literature based on theme allows us to incorporate Asian American authors. I have taught the classics along side multiculturalism. For example, I look at identity and the importance of tradition in my senior English class. Specifically, I like to focus on women. We read "Like Water for Chocolate" by Laura Esquivel, "Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston, Selections from "Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan, "Macbeth" by Shakespeare, and "Only Daughter" or "Woman Hollering Creek" by Sandra Cisneros. I have the students look at the traditions in these societies and what they expect from women. Are women supposed to stay at home and keep quiet? Or can they create an identity that may break apart from family and society? By the time we get to the end of the unit, my students are able to trace the common thread of the theme and look at the importance of identity. Their final essay incorporates several works from the unit and the students explore the importance of identity. Can a person be an individual and stay true to traditional roles placed on women? These are the points I ask my students to consider. I get some amazing essays from my kids. 😀

[Anonymous]

What are some ways in which to incorporate language arts and Asian literature into classroom activities when teaching very young children (3-5 years)?

I begin by explaining to the children that for the next week we are going to be learning about a different country (i.e., Japan).

The classroom environment is set up to incorporate Japanese pictures, art work, books, foods, modern and traditional/clothing, and the different Japanese holidays etc.

I may devote one day to Japanese clothing. I discuss both the traditional/modern clothing that is worn in the Japenese culture. I read stories and show the children different pictures of the type of clothing.
Because young children cannot write, what are some ways that teachers can measure
what they are learning or thinking?
I get a good idea of what children are learning by having them draw pictures of what has either been discussed or read. The children dictate in their own words what they have drawn and I write underneath their drawing what they have said. I am always astonished and amazed as to what the children retain and what they say about the culture that we are studying. Because young children are so inquisitive and eager to learn, I feel it is the responsibility of the teacher to expose them to many diverse cultures. Therefore, the time to start teaching children about cultures and diversity starts before they can read or write.

[Anonymous]

I don't think the idea is to teach about all these cultures. I think it is up to us (English teachers)to seek themes and help students understand how these themes appear cross-culturally. The relationship of children to their parents, the idea of traditions and how they play a part in the lives of adolescents, the value of education, the female in society and how her role is changing/not changing, etc.

The point of these classes is for the teacher to acquire a better understanding and perhaps have a chance to relate better to some of the pressures on the students we teach. I now understand a little better what may be going on with one of my Indonesian students who hasn't seen her father in 10 years, or why some of my Korean students are sent here (to the US) to be educated) without parents.

[Anonymous]

I think the idea of connecting with other languages and using that as a way to teach English is helpful. What can we learn from our students about the differences between their home languages and how their grammar and constructions differ may help define our instruction. I find that the use of prepositions is really difficult for my Korean students and I wondered how these concepts were dealt with in Korean. I still don'thave a good idea, but my kids did say that studying expressions to learn how to use prepositional phrases was helpful.
how does this translate (haha) into Asian literature. How do we know what the translator is working from?

[Anonymous]

Have you ever heard of the Cinderella story? Of course! We all did! 😀 This story is a children's classic in all countries. The versions of the story changes in each country based on its tradition, values, and culture. Teaching the Cinderella story to children (age 3-5) is quite an around-the-world experience. As for sticking to the American classics, even though it teaches the depth of Hawthorne, Melville, and Shakespeare's work, but that also limits their cultural diversity. Children these days need to learn what is around them and be able to judge for themselve what values they want to uphold. This can be achieved depending on how we as teachers find a way to get them exposed; that is to teach them multi-cultural literature.

Thuy

[clay dube]

Some might take offense at including "Tom and Jerry" in our literature forum, but I wanted to use a recent news story on Tom and Jerry in China to raise a couple of questions.

The Associated Press story by Christopher Bodeen notes that China's central government blocked a Shanghai television stations efforts to use Shanghai-dialect in dubbing "Tom and Jerry," the popular American cartoon series. [BTW: the author noted that Tom and Jerry, in the English original, don't speak. In this version, however, they do.] Bodeen notes the government seeks to forge national unity partly through the promotion of Mandarin in schools and through radio, films, and television.

London Times version - 12/23/2004

LA Times version - 12/19/2004

Questions to take up with students --
1. What role do language and literature play in forging national identity?
2. What examples can you cite where dialects or accents and customs help to identify where, within a nation, a person comes from? How do authors/filmmakers use dialects/accents to signal something about a character or situation?

[Anonymous]

“Don’t we have enough to do just teaching our kids how to read and write?”

Phew. Ultimately my answer to this question would have to be yes. Because I teach the DRW (Developing Readers and Writers) classes, I have a great deal of experience with trying to “just teach my kids how to read and write.” But the catch is, if they don’t have anything to read or write about that catches and holds their interest, all my efforts are of no use. “See Spot run.” (and I put this in quotation marks because this is not exactly what my students read, but how others view the program) only gets us so far. There is the point where the student has to make a personal connection to reading and writing, to exploring and discovering the world through books, and that is no easy feat to accomplish with a group of kids who have struggled all their lives and are as far as they’re concerned, not capable of reading. For these kids, I’m sad to say, the classics are a thousand years away. It is not that they can’t read them, for they very well could with help, as could most high-schooler, it is that they do not want to read them. They are a classic and therefore they are boring. But when you bring in literature that is unique, and to a certain extent, exotic, their ears perk up and pretty soon, if you pitch it right, they are sneaking off to slip the book in their backpack.

[Anonymous]

I have to agree that the definition of “Asian Literature” is also a tough one for me. Does Asian-American literature count?

Part of our ninth grade curriculum is reading a text titled: Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston. The text is about one family’s internment at camp Manzanar in California during WWII. While I would see this as a great opportunity to discuss Japanese culture, how it is transformed in America, how it is further transformed by the internment, and how Americans thus view the Japanese, I am not sure this would qualify as teaching Asian literature. While it would be a great example of hate and discrimination, and one’s attempt to hold on to what little culture is left, does it qualify as Asian when it is set in America?

[Anonymous]

2. What examples can you cite where dialects or accents and customs help to identify where, within a nation, a person comes from? How do authors/filmmakers use dialects/accents to signal something about a character or situation?

The question of dialect is one my students pick up on very quickly. They seem to have an inherent understanding of what a person from a certain country or region sounds like, how an educated person speaks as compared to a non-educated person, how people of different races and ethnicities use language, as well as how people from different social classes express themselves. You see this knowledge, unfortunately, when they attempt to stereotype or tease an individual or a certain group. And sadly, their most common attempts are toward Asians.

When reading a text like Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, students immediately respond to the dialects and manners of speech presented through each character. “Why do they talk so funny?” is a common question. “They sound like hicks,” is another common statement. Many students struggle to read dialogue in dialect, while others get right into it, turning their class clown charm into center stage theatrics.

So far, the deepest we have gotten into the tool of dialect is to discuss how it presents race, class, educational background, and regional information about a character. Changing the question to how an author/filmmaker uses this seems a bit too obvious or simplistic. The author does it through the use of dialogue, correct? Now why, is perhaps the more important question. Why did John Steinbeck want George and Lennie to sound like hicks, and Lennie more so to sound “slow”? What effect did this have on us as a reader? What information did it provide?

Why is the use of a certain dialect so critical to some texts/films that some countries rather pull programs from the air rather than have the wrong dialect represented? What is so powerful about dialect? These are the questions I would raise to my students.

[Anonymous]

This school year, I have been teaching AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination).
It is taking students from the "middle" who have been neglected because we primarily focus on low and high performing students and many times the middle is forgottened.
They are exposed to colleges/universities, study strategies, note taking and organization that will benefit and enhance their studies particularly in college.
It prepares them to be just as competitive as students who are taking higher level classes such as Advanced Placement.

One strategy I teach my students is the Cornell Note taking.
Instead of just reading a passage or lecturing, students have to take notes, share them with each other and write a summary of what they learned.
I find this style of note taking effective for my students.

1. It teaches them to be attentive listeners.
2. It helps them conceptualize what they learned through taking notes by means of a summary at the end. It also keeps them accountable with what they have learned.
3. It serves a great study guide.
4. It helps them to organize their thoughts.

It is hard to explain the anatomy of Cornell Notes so I will include a link:

http://cssdesigns.com/learningtoolbox/cornell.html

http://www.englishcompanion.com/pdfDocs/cornellintro.pdf#search='cornell%20notes'

These are two great sites that will do a better job of explaining what Cornell Notes are.

lc

[Anonymous]

Cornell Notes are a great way to help students improve their comprehension because it forces them to interact with the text they are reading and taking notes on because it requires not only that they distinguish between main information and details, but to formulate the questions that the information answers. This serves the same purpose as having students come up with their own questions to review material before exams. However, getting students into the habit of doing this consistently, helps to improve their overall comprehension. It is a skill they will always be able to use.

In the beginning, it can be helpful to supply a sort of study guide for note taking, where you supply some questions without information, and some information without text. That way students can have the experience of finding information that answers a question and creating a question that corresponds to given information. This way students ease into the process and get an understanding of what is being asked of them.

I have used cornell notes with my DRW students and they have proved very useful.

[Anonymous]

Teaching students to take taking is probably the most simple part of this system.
The greatest difficulty is having them formulate questions.
I teach Cornell Notes into three sections as they are evident in Cornell Notes.
I first have them write notes, they compare their notes in their collaborative learning communities and they take it home to present a more comprehensible/organized copy.
Then, I grade them with a feedback on ways to improve them.
Then have them write a quick summary.
Once again grade them and hand them back with a feedback of ways to improve.
During this time, I also acknowledge what I like and sometimes what I don't to the class obviously with the student's permission.
I then read a story on Goldilocks and the Three Bears to help them learn about High Order Thinking Questions.
I particularly use Bloom's but Costa's is just a smooth as well.
If you look for the Goldilocks story with Bloom's there are many sites for it.
It is pretty cool.
They kids figure out what level the questions are.
After that, the students then write questions based on their notes to serves as study guide.
It is a long tedious process especially the latter but it is worth it.
The kids eventually, even naturally take notes Cornell style without me saying, "Let's take our paper out and take Cornell Style Notes."

lc

[Anonymous]

I used many of the tools available at this website.
Here is the link:

English Companion -> Teacher Tools

I want to highlight the bookmarkers for Critical Reading.
I bought a ream of card stockk and copied them front and back then, I asked Kinko's to cut them.
Now I have 4,000 copies that will last.
I have kids turn in their bookmarkers as an indicator that they read the book.
It provides a sense of accountability rather than taking their word.

lc

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