This article describes the author's efforts to engage teachers in language study in a graduate course involving graduate students in Literacy Studies and TESOL programs. In the course "Language, Culture, and Identity: Issues for Teachers and Children," teachers study language like linguists: looking closely at language in use through in-class…

Language arts educators who teach Latino English language learners know that part of their job is to help students learn to distinguish between the vernacular varieties of Spanish (or Mandarin, or Portuguese, or Swahili), English they use at home, and the school varieties of language expected in the classroom and in other professional and…

Defines language awareness, examines shifts in meaning which words undergo, and discusses how this topic can be applied in education. (DD)

Describes a language arts project which used students' own first names as the project theme. (DD)

Contains an interview with journalist Edwin Newman in which Newman urges that students be taught to use language with greater precision, and a response to Newman by John S. Mayher and Rita S. Brause. (DD)

Reprint of an article published in the March 1937 issue of "The Elementary English Review" dealing with the decline of language. (DD)

Summarizes historical developments in the sociology of language and education. Urges teachers to create alternative patterns of interaction in their classrooms so that they might better promote learning, language development, and social relations among teachers and students. (RL)

Presents the "Englishes" of children from different social backgrounds that are reflected in the forms and functions of their individual ways of communicating. Discusses implications of these language varieties for the classroom. (HTH)

Presents brief annotations of 20 children's books and picture books, in 3 categories: books that contain dialect, books in 2 languages, and books with interesting ways of using language. (SR)

Presents research on the situational dimension of linguistic power in social context and the relevance of this research within culturally pluralistic educational contexts. Offers suggestions for class activities that can engage standard and nonstandard speakers of English as well as those who do not speak English. (SRT)

Offers reviews of 10 professional books that offer valuable information to language arts teachers who are concerned with the linguistic and cultural diversity in their classrooms. (SR)

Based on data collected during a three-year ethnographic study, this article explores the inextricably-linked notions of language and identity for White girls living in a high-poverty neighborhood in the US. Class-specific primary discourses are analyzed through an informal discussion, a literature-based discussion, and a conflict within a…