Language policy

Our lesson of today was one of the subject: language policy.

Very interesting because we, the students who are becoming a teacher, need to know what it is and how we can be a part of it.

The language policy are some rules and agreements how you can take marks for spelling mistakes or mistakes in terms of language. For example: the teacher who gives IT can lower the mark if a pupil makes a “dt-mistake”.

It’s very important as a teacher that you know that there is or isn’t a language policy. You need to live by these rules and agreements!
That’s also one reason why the subject: “communicatieve vaardigheden” is so important. We need to have those skills if we want to improve the skills of the pupils.

We need to make sure we will never forget the fact that there is a difference between the academic language and the language pupils use at home. We need to have respect for this fact, but we also need to stimulate and motivate the pupils to improve their language skills. It’s enrichment. The critic says that it’s not good to take time for these language skills, because it’s not good for the ones who already achieved a good level of the language skills. It’s enrichment for everybody. Exercise is the best way to make the academic language one of your own languages. We need to achieve an active knowledge (=ownership).

These skills are for a lifetime, so when we practice this a lot, this will be a higher achievement for all pupils.

How can we achieve this as teachers? Well we need to stimulate and motivate the pupils to pay attention to it. And we need to make sure that we use the correct academic language. It’s possible that you need to adapt your own language. We need to improve the academic language with the pupils, so give a good example to them. The vocabulary we use, the sentences we make, etc. are very important! The pupils will take it over!

Also it’s important to remember that this is a process that needs a lot of time. It’s not a process of one day or less. We ALWAYS need to pay attention to it and we must always try to improve that language by our pupils.

We can achieve this by:
- being explicit and intentional;
- using sheltered instruction techniques;
- using appropriate grade level texts.

It’s very important that you don’t simplify the texts! But it’s also very important that the levels of the texts aren’t ‘over the heads of the pupils’. Use appropriate grade level texts!

It’s bad to say to somebody that his or her language skills are poor, because you will create a negative reaction (“oké, my language is bad and I will not make an effort to improve it”).

Never say to a student: “shut up” because that’s wrong. We need to stimulate them to talk! Off course, here are boundaries. They need to talk about the class itself, not about subject that are situated outside of the class.