The three Authors that I see the most in my site are Garcia, Rodriguez and Macintosh. A lot of times I am put to work with a student who is working on a college essay or an essay for their internship presentations that they do at the end of each trimester. I often am correcting a rough draft of whatever they are working on and have noticed that more than once the English grammar is not used correctly because the English words are put into the same format and structure as a Spanish sentence would. For example in English we would say something like "the blue shoes" where as in Spanish they would say " Los zapatos azules" which directly translates too "the shoes blue" while the meaning behind what the student is trying to say is there the structure grammatically is off. This pertains to both Garcia and Rodriguez. Often times when I am working there as well with students they communicate with one another in Spanish and I however, cannot speak it fluently do know a little and can usually pick up on key words to better understand a students question or problem that they may not know how to say correctly in English so I usually can help them. However, the students do become surprised that I do know the amount of Spanish that I do because I am white. This relates ti Macintosh's article about the way that people are read in the world around them.
Link to Map of Authors
I had a lot of the same points on my chart... wonder why lol
ReplyDeleteThat is so funny that we picked the same topic. I wish that I spoke Spanish or at least understood some of it.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to the connections to McIntosh, Garcia, and Rodriquez at my site too. I feel like learning Spanish would be very useful in a school setting.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you are picking up on the Spanish-grammatical logic that your students are using in their English essays. There seems to be a consistency to the ways they are framing their language. I agree I see Garcia here (can you say more about what connections you are making about translanguaging?) I also see Lyiscott's liberating literacies here. When you say that students have important meanings -- how do you convey the importance of their meanings/reinforce that students have important and valid things to say? Are students' multiple literacies, including spanish informed english grammar, celebrated or are they problems to be extinguished? What does this say about the way schools function for students' identities, languages, and literacies?
ReplyDeleteI want to know more about how it feels to be White in this space -- it sounds like students are positioning and expecting you to know and act in certain ways. As a White English speaker, how are you framing English grammar and your knowledge? Who has the power in your tutoring sessions and why?
Nice thinking here!