Purpose: This paper posits the need for English language arts (ELA) teachers to foster students' use of languaging about their relations with ecosystems and peers, leading to their engaging in collective action to critique and transform status-quo systems impacting the climate crisis. Design/methodology/approach: This paper reviews the current…

As part of an ethnographic study of a secondary English Language Arts classroom, one teacher took a critical translingual approach to curriculum and instruction, encouraging students to engage in translanguaging and to explore the intersections of language with power and identity. The larger study's central question was, what does participation in…

Purpose: Unlike formalist and functional approaches to literacy and teaching writing, a languaging theory approach centers on the dynamic and interpersonal nature of writing. The purpose of this study was to determine students' ability to engage in explicit reflection about their languaging actions in response to their personal narrative writing…

In this article, the author historicizes the argument about Black Language in the classroom to contextualize the contemporary linguistic inequities that Black students experience in English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Next, the author describes "anti-black linguistic racism" and interrogates the notion of academic language. Following…

The transgressive use of language by out-group speakers, or crossing is used in a variety of ways to achieve both affiliative and disaffiliative ends among youths. However, crossing can also be used as an affiliative resource in asymmetrical power relations between teachers and students. Reporting on the findings of a 1.5 year ethnography of an…

A number of arguments appeared in the late-nineteenth-century United States about "correctness" in language, arguments for and against enforcing a standard of correctness and arguments about what should count as correct in language. Insofar as knowledge about and facility with "correct" linguistic usage could affect one's standing in the social…

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…

It is essential that language arts students in teacher education programs learn more than just facts about language, such as grammar, dialect, and so on. Future teachers must be taught how language, especially the child's language, affects the teacher, the child, and the child's achievement in school. These prospective teachers should learn what…

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)

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)

Even though linguistics has freed us from misconceptions, we have continued to seek answers to usage problems primarily by looking to linguistics. The myth of the verbal authority of standard speakers has given way to the evaluation of statistical frequency of forms. No matter how extensive or accurate the statistics, they must still be followed…

Emphasizing a sociocultural view, this book encourages language teachers to broaden their views of the English language arts curriculum, and thereby increase students' opportunities to examine a broader array of language elements (semantics, regional and social variations, discourse conventions). The first section of the book describes what…

This study investigated verbal behavior of five third-grade children representing three cultural groups: Afro-American, Afro-Caribbean, and white. Ten sessions involving various language arts activities were tape recorded over a five-week period; session 7 was also videotaped. Sessions 3 to 10 involved group interaction across three interaction…

Focusing on children's books identified as "notable" for their rich use of language, this book presents essays that discuss literary genres and literary language, responding to the language of Notable Books, and developing an appreciation for language diversity. The book also presents brief essays by well-known children's authors…

Teacher talk can be characterized as a "caregiving" style which has certain identifiable phonological, lexical, and grammatical features. Analysis of classroom discourse can make teachers and students of language aware of the process of communication, and can identify particular uses of nonverbal as well as verbal communication. This, in…