October+3

Feel free to respond to one of the questions below or to one of your own creation. Be sure to post one of your own postings and respond to at least one peer.

Option 1: Joanne Dowdy writes about how her experience writing television skits provided "the dignity of shaping my world as I saw it and the ability to name the world in the way I experienced it...the choice betweeen the 'th's and the 'de's" (p.11).
 * Discuss why you think this experience created this feeling of 'dignity' in Dowdy. What is it about that experience that allowed her this freedom? What do you think caused her to feel that 'dignity'?
 * Are there ways we can foster this in our own classrooms? (Lesson ideas? Discussion topics? Assignments? Texts?)

Option 2: Delpit describes the influence of an "affective filter" on 2nd language acquisition.
 * Does this seem like a believable hypothesis for language learning? Why/why not? (feel free to use support from your own life, your students, etc. to explain your answer)
 * Is this more or less difficult to address with students who speak a different dialect (rather than 2nd-language students learning an entirely new language)?