Investigation B
Part 1
Explore some issues about language and identity with your class, using some of the statements listed in Investigation A . You may have to rewrite them to suit your class.
In the associated material Student views on language , you can see the statements one teacher used with his secondary students, and the comments they made.
- Do your students agree with the statements or not?
- Can they think of examples?
- How do they think these experiences affect language learning and language use?
As an aid to exploring the statements, get your students to use the Individual, Pair, Group (IPG) approach, described in the inquiry Who talks in class? and in the associated material Encouraging oral participation .
If your students do not like discussing things at length, they can note their comments and examples quickly and move on to the next point.
Part 2
- Discuss the students’ responses with a colleague.
- Identify any responses that suggest factors which could have a negative effect on the students’ motivation to learn at school.
- Identify the focus and source of the conflict in the table below.
The cross in the first box (which is given as an example) indicates that the student has a conflict about whether or not to use academic English – this is the focus of the conflict. The source of the conflict is the student’s classmates, perhaps because they don’t support using more complex language and ’fancy words’, as one student expressed it.
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Classmates |
School |
Friends |
Other people |
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Academic English |
X |
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Developing the Pasifika language(s) |
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Curriculum learning |
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Other |
- Brainstorm some more ways in which your classroom or school could help reduce the conflicts or difficulties for the students.
