Making Language Visible

by Ruslana Westerlund The New York Times published an op-ed in 2015 analyzing the language used in the Texas History textbooks published by McGraw-Hill Education. The “Grammatical choices as moral choices” phrase in my title came from that article. The NYT piece references this original post where Coby Burren, a 15…

By Ruslana Westerlund I’ve been thinking about the act of writing for a while now. What is writing? What does it mean to be a writer? What are the linguistic and cultural challenges to writing for multilingual writers? In this blog, I’ll talk about what writing means to me.  I’ll…

By Katy J. Kobany Cumulative Project for EDUC 731: Responsive Pedagogy for ELLs, Bethel University, Teacher: Dr. Ruslana Westerlund Academic standards 8323: Water, which covers the majority of the Earth’s surface, circulates through the crust, oceans and atmosphere in what is known as the water cycle. Essential question(s) Where is water…

Originally posted on The Educational Linguist: During this week’s presidential debate my social media exploded with commentary about Donald Trump’s use of the term “bad hombres.” Many linguistics immediately saw this as an example of Mock Spanish, most notably developed in Jane Hill’s book The Everyday Language of White Racism.…

Source: Bernsand, N. (2001). Surzhyk and National Identity in Ukrainian Nationalist Language Ideology. Berliner Osteuropa Info. Forum.  Retrieved from: http://www.oei.fu-berlin.de/media/publikationen/boi/boi_17/11_bernsand.pdf

Source: Hasan, R. (2008/2011). Modes of learning, modes of teaching: semiotic mediation and knowledge. Language and education: Learning and teaching in society. Volume 3. ed. J Webster. London: Equinox. Chapter 2.

By Miranda Schornack, a doctoral student in Second Language Education at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. The bright side In 2014, the Minnesota Legislature enacted requirements for educator relicensure that focus on professional growth around working with English learners (ELs) (MN§122A.18, Subd. 4(b)) (also, see Appendix A). These new requirements are…

by Ruslana Westerlund, Ed. D., WIDA at Wisconsin Center for Education Research and Luciana C. de Oliveira, Ph.D., University of Miami Much more than a reclassification issue: ELLs in K-12: A Response to Keeping long-term English learners from getting stuck This blog post is in response to the original blog Keeping…