| Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page |
This is an article in an online database that can be accessed by anyone. Elbow, Peter. “Inviting the Mother Tongue: Beyond ‘Mistakes’, ‘Bad English’, and ‘Wrong Language’.” JAC Online, https://www.jaconlinejournal.com/archives/vol19.3/elbow-inviting.pdf. Accessed 24 August 2020.
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| Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words | When I first read this article, I was reminded of teachers and students from my hometown. My high school was a majority minority school, meaning POC outnumbered non-POC by about 65% to 35%. Even in this environment, teachers were still close minded to other “mother tongues” and dialects. Elbow brings about points that no one’s mother tongue is the perfect SWE, which means no one can criticize or belittle another for having a different dialect from their own. A person’s mother tongue is powerful and integral to who they are as a person. Sadly, the attack on this diversity isn’t a new problem, it has existed for as long as language has been around.
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| Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author.
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“Full attention to speaking and rhetoric is not possible unless we can make the classroom a place that is safe for all forms of language considered wrong.” Elbow’s words here really stumped me. The culture of the world is so self-centered that any forms of diversity in dialect are just cast aside as “inferior”. The concept of throwing away the divide between these mother languages and celebrating what makes them unique is beautiful. The stigma that ESL speakers have would no longer distract from their education, and more people could really see how special it is. |
| How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?
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I have done some light reading about social media culture in the past few months. Since the technology boom in the last 20 years, a new dialect has grown exponentially. From new slang to emoji’s to understood “trends”, social media lingo is its own language now. Young people can speak in a way off the screen that will confuse anyone who doesn’t stay caught up. This new dialect is far from the SWE and it is creating a rift between the students who are “superior” (having the closest mother tongue to SWE) and SWE. |
| Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion. | How will the growth of technology and social media dialect affect younger student’s mother tongue in years to come? Will there be a day that all students have learn SWE as a “second language”? |