Unit 10 Topics

Activity Topic 1

Activity 1: Language Variation in the US

I was curious to hear the different accents for the different states and even within the same state. I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia until I was almost 5. Then my mother and I moved to the Pittburgh, Pa area. Both areas have distent accents and I feel I have inherited a little from each place. The reason I bring this up is because I find accents so interesting and I also think since I had trouble with sounds in the early part of my life I wonder if some of my difficultly is because of the different accents I was exposed to a child.

I really enjoyed playing the game can you guess where my accent is from. I realized early on in the game that I could not tell from the sentence they were reading but more from when they asked the question, “Where is my accent from?” I think that is because that sentence came natural to them where the other was being read.

Activity Topic 2

Activity 1: What would you do?

I am disgusted with how people treat people who are different then them. Being a special education teacher I have been advocating for my children for a long time and will continue to advocate for all children. I think it is important to remember and to remind my co-workers that even if they would like to discuss issues with the parents. (Which I would tell them is wrong and to take it up with the law makers not the people trying to do better for their families) that the children didn’t ask to be here  in the USA and we have a right to those children to educate them!

Another important thing to remember is as an ESL teacher to not favor a certain nationality when working with many other students. I am thinking that an ESL teacher in our district was teasing but it still made me feel uncomfortable when we were drawing names out to win prizes and they were saying yes another Hispanic name. So as much as we stand up for our students make sure we are standing up for all of our students!

Activity 2: Do you speak American?

Sociolinguistics is an interesting topic too. I think it is amazing how certain words, slang, and fads are picked up. I mentioned in my other post about texting and how that language is because very popular and how people are responding to that fad as well. I think we will continue to see changes in sociolinguistics over time.