Valuing Students' Social Language
Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan talks about the difference between informal and formal language (social and academic language) and why it's important to value students' language experiences.
See the full interview with Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan in our Meet the Expert section.
Transcript
The way we use our language in English is not the way they use their language and their home language.
Just be aware of that. And that awareness can be, it's not wrong, it's you bringing your assets to this language. Yeah, that's one way.
And the other thing is we have different registers of language. We have our informal register, and that's what we typically learn first when you're learning a new language, the informal language, and we're trying to get to the academic language. And so I always tell the students, "Oh, that's one way. Awesome. Here's another way that's more formal for the classroom. Good for you, good for you. You have that way. It's beautiful. And here's another way that I want to teach you for our classroom use." And so it's really teaching them that they move from register to register, from informal register to formal, from social to academic.