Assignment for Education 2011/10/19

The following is a draft for Educational diversity class.
Although I understand there is an absolute lack of the original reading materials,
I hope you take a look and offer me corrections and/or suggestions in grammar and content.


[Question]

Explain the relationship of socioeconomic status to mathematics education.

[Question]

Explain how social class relates to literacy and language performance and, to a lesser degree, any recommendations you might offer for supporting the language/literacy learning of low-income students.

[My Answer]

Students tend to attain higher academic achievements in literacy and language performance when they benefit from exposure and involvement to literature in early ages (e.g. Myrberg & Rosén, 2009). Such learning conditions include having access and exposure to more vocabulary and literature through books or peoples’ speeches. However, typically only higher-income families can afford or offer those environment at home, and thus students from families with higher income tend to accomplish academically better in literacy and language performance. Some studies show that a lack of vocabulary knowledge in early age leads to greater difficulties in reading in later stages, which is a common issue for students from low-income families (Hemphill & Tivnan, 2008).

Language dialects are relatively common in lower social class families, but the differences between Standard English, which is valued, taught and expected in school, might be constant and vigorous challenges for those students. By contrast, students from higher social class family often have been familiarized with Standard English at home and can process relatively seamless learning as a result.

Although what is mentioned above is basically about native speaker students, when we expand the target students to (English) language learners as well, social class does influence language proficiency development and literacy skills (“Facts about social class” http://www.britannica.com/facts/5/393721/social-class-as-discussed-in-dialect-linguistics ). A plausible interpretation for this would be the interdependency of communication as an inevitable process of language learning along with grouping according to social classes.

The conundrum would be that such reading skill/knowledge gaps among students are often already created according to their social class before they even start learning in school, and that the gaps tend to be tenacious or even cause exacerbation in further learning because such basic knowledge involves comprehension ability in general. Similarly, language dialects caused by pre-school family environment, particularly social class or income level, can cause a long-lasting adverse influence in students’ learning.

Accordingly, as for teachers’ role, supporting low-income students should apparently focus on narrowing their skill/knowledge gaps from their high-income counterparts, assuming those low-income students’ typically being unfamiliar with Standard English and having limited vocabulary knowledge in pre-school phase. Here, as those gaps are caused by the indigenous environmental differences, resorting to independent extra-curricular activities would be more realistic and plausible than trying to include the “bridge” processes solely in classrooms or depending on family supports.

I personally think newspaper articles would be a common source of Standard English or standard target language use with contemporary topics corroborated by relevant vocabulary, a certain level of information density, and grammatical accuracy. Owing to the availability, newspapers can be seamlessly integrated into students’ daily life with minimal hesitation or anxiety. Students would benefit from summarizing articles or writing short responses by being familiar with contemporary topics and new vocabularies in authentic language use along with output process involvement. Attaining familiarity to literature and consequently processing skills of information would be a key to minimize obstacles in learning for students with limited amount of exposure at home in early age.