What Happened to Language in the Language Arts? Latina/o Middle School Youth on Language

• In Event: Leveling the Language of Multilingual/Multicultural Students: Toward Pluralizing Definitions of Academic Language and Humanizing Pedagogy

Abstract

Sociocultural language and literacy scholars have long exhorted educators to recognize and build upon the languages youth display across their everyday lives (Alim, 2004; Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Gee, 1999; Hull & Shultz, 2001; Heath, 1983; Rogers, 2001). However, teachers have expressed concern over how to effectively build on the language resources of non-dominant groups (Gándara, P. C., Maxwell-Jolly, J., & Driscoll, A., 2005; LeMoine, N., & Hollie, S., 2007). This is especially concerning given the pressure on teachers to have their students perform on assessments that only privilege academic varieties of English (Menken, 2009). In addition, the everyday language and literacy practices of students from non-dominant groups, though recognized as complex and sophisticated by researchers (Gonzalez, 2001; Rymes, 2001; Alim, 2004) are often treated by teachers – and youth themselves – as inferior to school language practices (Alim, 2005).
This paper will present findings from research that asked middle school youth to think about and reflect on the various ways they use language in their everyday activity settings over two academic years. Specifically, this paper will focus on the metalinguistic messages of these youth 1) as they engaged in classroom writing activities centered on their skills as language brokers and 2) youth produced films and reflection on these films that documented their everyday linguistic repertoires. By doing so, the authors call attention to the diverse messages these youth present in addition to applications to the English Language Arts classroom where explicit talk about language is absent or narrow in its purpose.
Framed within a sociocultural perspective on the relationship between home and school practices we build on research that documents youths’ ability to shift registers, styles, and modes (Alim, 2004). We also draw on scholarship that identifies continuities as well as discontinuities between home and school practices (Lee, 2007; Rogers, 2001). Rather than trying to reconcile differences, as called for by earlier research that identified cultural “mismatches” (Au, 1980; Philips, 1993), we aim to leverage (Michaels, 1991) and level the language resources of non-dominant youth through an analysis of youth produced films about their linguistic repertoires.
Research was conducted on and with Latina/o middle school youth and their teacher, Ms. Reyes, at Pueblo Unido Charter Academy, a middle school located in an urban Los Angeles community. With the youth themselves, the research team sought to understand the usefulness of students’ everyday language and literacy practices for schooling tasks.
This paper draws attention to the linguistic dexterity of youth, in particular exploring the ingenuity of these youth as they comment on the uses of their language, the reasons why they use specific “kinds” of language, and their reasoning about these ways with words in and out of schooling contexts. This data presented highlights how youth are participating in languaging and translanguaging in their everyday interactions (Garcia, 2009) and youth are capable of using their knowledge of language and its uses for academic purposes.

Authors

• Danny C. Martinez, University of California - Davis

• Elizabeth Montaño, University of California - Davis