Tom Le Seelleur Lisburn, NI
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Post by Tom Le Seelleur Lisburn, NI on Jun 7, 2020 8:11:32 GMT
Language is forever evolving with views of correctness and acceptability transforming the way we express ourselves. Take the lockdown across the world we have quickly adapted ourselves to 'convid 19 speak' but once it all blows over a few of the words may persist while others will die out or be used for something else. Language has changed due to fashion and locality. If you read original HG Wells 'War of the Worlds' the language used then would seem so strange and alien to most nowadays and yet his 'speak' was considered different back then.
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Tom Le Seelleur Lisburn, NI
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Post by Tom Le Seelleur Lisburn, NI on Jun 7, 2020 8:21:17 GMT
I recommend students to watch Engvid because they have a variety of speakers with various attitudes to language. I also recommend to students to choose speakers they like and not to watch ones they don't like. Just because Ronnie expresses an opinion that some find offensive 'linguistically' does not mean that all her videos should therefore be rubbished. We are prone to make judgements and what I say might be offensive to someone else and in 50 years the way I express myself might be viewed as 'redundant' I teach what I know not what I dont.
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Post by Sally Urquhart on Jun 9, 2020 15:49:00 GMT
I think variations in each aspect of English are interesting to note and be aware of through different dialects. I see grammar rules as a useful rough guide for learning and teaching, but I prefer to lean into a descriptive method and explain in what contexts there variations would be heard/used.
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Post by jellow on Jun 11, 2020 16:02:29 GMT
I guess we need some rules on perspective levels as almost every one of us are educated from a school. And the school teaches standard English and English rules. They are designed for exams or academic usages. But outside the classroom, there are hundreds of varieties of English usages in the world. It is really hard to define which is correct or incorrect. It might be unacceptable today but with the time passed and more and more people are using it, then it will become a acceptable usage one day. New words are emerging every day and many are collected in the Oxford English dictionary every year, which shows their official status in the English language. I agree. There should be a middle ground for all Englishes.
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Post by evarojo on Jun 18, 2020 17:32:47 GMT
As a Spanish speaker and English teacher I have found myself in the situation of teaching not double negatives, explaining to my students that is the norm but that, in real life, what you want to do with your English is to communicate. I am so relieve now to find out regularities, I was not mistaken, I was not alone. Many of my colleagues are very grammar-based and teach grammar, grammar, grammar though I always prefer a more communicative approach and benefit fluency over accuracy. I teach grammar, it is on the curriculum, but I always share with my students the view of grammar as one more tool to use on the learning adventure.
So I totally disagree with the speaker on the video, and I am sure my teenager students would hate her!
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Post by evarojo on Jun 18, 2020 17:34:47 GMT
As a Spanish speaker and English teacher I have found myself in the situation of teaching not double negatives, explaining to my students that is the norm but that, in real life, what you want to do with your English is to communicate. I am so relieve now to find out regularities, I was not mistaken, I was not alone. Many of my colleagues are very grammar-based and teach grammar, grammar, grammar though I always prefer a more communicative approach and benefit fluency over accuracy. I teach grammar, it is on the curriculum, but I always share with my students the view of grammar as one more tool to use on the learning adventure.
So I totally disagree with the speaker on the video, and I am sure my teenager students would hate her!
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Post by Amaryllis on Jun 23, 2020 19:50:56 GMT
Isn't language supposed to be about communication mainly? It is very common for African-Americans to use double negatives and with English being the international language, there are multiple varieties of the language throughout the world. Moreover, English is said to be one such language that can deliver the message with complete comprehension from the listener even if the grammar is incorrect. I think that is a very respectable quality of the language. Of course, there is always going to be 'correct' and 'incorrect' usage but that is completely subjective. If British and American Englishes can be accepted widely, why not other varieties of the language? Like Nidhi, I believe that language is about communication. I think that effective communication, more than the form it takes, is the ultimate goal of language use. I liked Kellam Barta’s point on the TEDx talk that just because you say something differently doesn’t mean you’re saying it wrong. But this linguistic argument is convincing only if you have a humanistic and open-minded view towards language and society; if you believe in equality among individuals - that one can be different but equal. And this mindset does not depend on your profession, level of education, country of birth or how much you have travelled. It depends on a willingness to look at issues openly, honestly, and from different perspectives. So the linguistic view of ‘correctness’ will not be easily accepted by persons with a more hierarchical and rigid view of language and society. It is difficult to change entrenched assumptions, but I believe that over time it is possible. By raising awareness of these assumptions and making them explicit, by bringing what was hidden into the light of day, we take small steps forward towards a more inclusive community of learners and ultimately a more inclusive society.
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Post by Amaryllis on Jun 23, 2020 19:51:56 GMT
I didn't even open the video of Ronnie-- not interested in giving her views on youtube! But I can see from that cover image and the language she has "corrected" on the board is from a very prescriptivist view. I'm from the southern U.S., where AAVE is used heavily and is totally acceptable. The policing of that English has racist intent disguised as a desire for "propriety" (i.e. if this is how you speak you are not legitimate in this society). The fact that many Spanish speakers will create sentences like this because of how this grammar works in their L1 is another addition to the example of double negatives being acceptable-- I doubt many of us have heard a double negative used without any particular emphasis on the negation and thought "2 negatives makes a positive so he means the opposite of what he's just said!"... it seems like a way of policing others and creating an us vs. them divide (the smart vs. dumb, the native vs. the non-native, the right vs. the wrong, the higher vs. lower class, however you'd like to cut it). There are some regularities that, if not used in communication, can create confusion. However, I think taking these "rules" at face value erases a lot of what happens in communication-- we use intonation, body language, context, etc. to build meaning into our speech. It is a rich process that doesn't rely only on grammar or vocabulary, and telling someone that breaking a "rule" will make them unintelligible is likely not as true as some teachers would like to believe. I couldn’t bring myself to open the Ronnie video either...
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Post by Anita on Jul 1, 2020 9:13:37 GMT
Ronnie's comments shows her ignorance to the varieties to English and its Plurilithic forms.The TEDX video prior to this section is an answer to her remarks. Kellam Barta rightly puts it as ''Language variation is a difference not a deficit'.There is nothing such as ''correct English'' as long as it is communicative in nature.
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Post by marian on Jul 1, 2020 19:28:17 GMT
I couldn't agree more with the Administrator, since I couldn't stand more than "3 minutes of teacher Ronnie's video on double negatives" either. Although I will continue teaching my students that they should not use double negatives, I would never tell them that someone who does is stupid. When learning a new language you encounter non-standard variations and it is essential to understand them and to be open-minded to accept them.
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Post by Mu Mc on Jul 3, 2020 12:05:24 GMT
I recommend students to watch Engvid because they have a variety of speakers with various attitudes to language. I also recommend to students to choose speakers they like and not to watch ones they don't like. Just because Ronnie expresses an opinion that some find offensive 'linguistically' does not mean that all her videos should therefore be rubbished. We are prone to make judgements and what I say might be offensive to someone else and in 50 years the way I express myself might be viewed as 'redundant' I teach what I know not what I dont. Totally agree Tom. The video which features Ronnie speaking about double negatives is loaded with inferences which suggest that the prescriptive use of 'Queens English' is more desirable than using colloquial speech. She also states outright that if you use 'ain't' in your speech that you can be considered 'uneducated' or 'stupid'. These views appear quite offensive yet if you persevere, don't rubbish all her work by watching other videos where she features, eg, the precise pronunciation of the letter t in words, you will find gems of information and thought provoking issues being raised.
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Post by beatrizguerra on Jul 7, 2020 21:26:36 GMT
After watching Ronnie's video I was so shocked by how she addressed the double negatives, by how she was kind of disrespectful towards the artists and people who speak in that way. I, sometimes, use double negatives and no one ever had a problem in understanding what I said and the same applies to when I hear people saying it. As the use of double negatives doesn't affect the communication between speakers, it is possible to observe that using different forms of speaking, besides the Standard English form, does not affect the intelligibility among speakers. Thus, a different form of the language is not wrong just because it does not belongs to a certain variety (Standard English). Therefore, there shouldn't be a prescriptive approach defining what is wrong and what is right but a descriptive perspective on language.
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mkhan
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Post by mkhan on Jul 13, 2020 9:06:45 GMT
I think there has to be some rigidity maintained for preserving the language no matter how dynamic it is.
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Post by Ulla on Jul 24, 2020 11:53:22 GMT
Another commenter here made a good point - in our fist language, we are often taught to use more standard forms when talking to, for example, a potential employer who might share Teacher Ronnie's views on non-standard language use. It's a difficult balancing act, but I think this is something we need to make learners aware of at more advanced levels. People will form an opinion of you based on how you express yourself. Personally, I think the goal should be to make learners aware of prejudices that exist so that they can learn to adjust their language use to the situation as needed.
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lisa
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Post by lisa on Jul 26, 2020 7:27:39 GMT
What a shame that students come across these monolithic viewpoints from teachers who they trust to give them the right answers... What we should be doing is opening up the debate to students not telling them what is right and wrong (in our opinion)
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