Linguistic variations and writing: elementary school teachers? views of their students? written language

IPARRAGUIRRE, M.S.; SCHEUER, N.; DE LA CRUZ, M.

Oporto

Exposición; Linguistic variations and writing: elementary school teachers? views of their students? written language; 2012

In elementary schools, the teaching-learning process is mainly based on linguistic communication. In particular, written language is both object and means of instruction, with a pervading presence in assignments and assessments. Teachers? expectations about their students? learning are often influenced by how they perceive and value their students? linguistic variety (Heredia & Bixio, 1991). However, among the broad range of linguistic forms present in complex societies, those used mainly by urban middle/high socio-economical groups are privileged in schooling. This limited educational receptivity to socio-regional linguistic variations contributes to deepen educational exclusion processes (Iparraguirre, 2010), affecting mostly students from under-privileged social groups (Snow, 2006). The aim of this study is to explore teachers? awareness of linguistic variations in writing. Our research questions are: How do teachers conceive of the specific features of their students? written language, writing progress during schooling and difficulties when writing; as well as the aims of teaching to write in elementary education and the ways in which teachers and children?s families contribute to achieve them? Do teachers show awareness of and receptivity to their students? particular socio-linguistic features? We selected four schools in Northwestern Patagonia (Argentina) with different school modalities and diverse degrees of geographical and social integration. A written questionnaire was designed in order to explore teachers? conceptions (mentioned above), by means of open-ended questions. All the teachers in these schools (n=39) were asked to complete the questionnaire individually in the term of two weeks; 26 of them returned it. We applied lexicometry -a computational method for the analysis of textual data (Lebart, Bécue and Salem, 2000)- to the complete transcriptions of teachers? handwritten answers . Teachers? answers showed little articulation with socio-linguistic, cognitive or educational theories, revealing a mechanical and rigid view of written language. Teachers did not seem to acknowledge that their students? linguistic variations when writing offer useful and necessary information to work with. Results highlight the need to improve teachers? linguistic professional training, concerning specific features of writing along with sociolinguistic and register variations that pervade written language.