Instructional Technology
Conference 2007
Title:
Enhancing learning by using multi-media in teaching
variation in Standard English
Name: Mohammad Albakry
Audience Level: All
Audience:
general
Length:
1 hour
Abstract:
This presentation will demonstrate how a sound teaching methodology towards
Standard English can benefit from a multimedia approach that includes listening to
different social and regional dialects, accessing electronic texts from different genre as
well as showing visual patterns of variation across the continuum of Standard English.
This approach encourages students to be independent learners and gives them ample
opportunities to analyze language systematically by interacting with a variety of written
and spoken language samples.
Description:
In spite of the fact that there is no official academy that regulates usage for the
English language as is the case with other languages, there is a widely recognized
Standard English (Biber et al, 1999). This variety of the language is supposed to be fixed
and homogenous with little variability. This popular notion, however, is not a
linguistically sound one since it fails to take into account the variation across the written
and spoken registers as well as the dialects of the standard language. This presentation
indicates how a sound teaching methodology can benefit from a multimedia approach to
include both descriptive and prescriptive information relevant to our understanding of
what the term “standard” really means when applied to language description. This
approach is based on giving students the opportunity to listen to different social and
regional dialects of the language, providing them with access to electronically stored
texts from different genre (e.g. fiction language, news language, academic language, and
conversation), teaching them how to target specific structural and lexical features within
these genre by using commercially available and free software (e.g. concordance
programs designed for linguistic purposes) as well as showing them visual patterns and
trends of variation across the continuum of Standard English. The goal is to enable
students to have a more comprehensive view of the language based on how language is
actually used in its wider contexts. Only in this way, can we do justice to the complexity
of the grammatical characteristics shared widely across the different genre and dialects.
This multi-media approach encourages students to be independent learners and gives
them ample opportunities to investigate language analytically by interacting with a
variety of written and spoken language samples.
Session Type: Lecture/Presentation
Contact information/affiliation:
Mohammad Albakry
Albakry@mtsu.edu