What's Different Here?

Language in a math class, language across cultures.

You decide to experience something different one summer, and sign up to work as a research assistant at Stanford University. The research project, known as TIMSS (The Third International Math and Science Study), is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, and its purpose is to understand differences between Japan and the United States in mathematics instruction. As part of the data collection, the project video taped instruction in the two countries (there were many other countries involved, but only the cases of U.S. and Japan will concern us here).

Your supervisor gives you videos of geometry instruction in a Japanese and U. S. classroom (the files labelled TIMMS Japan.mov and TIMMS US.mov on course CD#2), and asks you to take a look at the nature of the academic language used by the two teachers. He writes the following instructions:

 

Hi! I need to give a public presentation to some teachers and principals on the differences in language used by teachers in Japan and the U.S. The teachers in these two videos are strikingly different, anyone can see that impressionistically. But I'd like to put it in terms of the research base on academic language. I have some papers that are influential in what they say are important about academic language -- I've put the references below. Can you give me some specific segments from the videos that I can use to illustrate some of the differences? If you could frame it around the issues raised in the two papers, that would be the best -- for example, paper by Solomon and Rhodes talks about academic functions, such as seeking information, informing, analyzing, comparing, classifying, predicting, etc., but it also stresses other classroom discourse structures such as the IRE (Initiation, Reply, Evaluation) as well as other more informal social uses of language. Please give me two excerpts (in the way that Solomon and Rhodes model in their examples, i.e., a brief running transcript) from each video, and accompany these with some points about academic language that they raise. Please also indicate for me the "time stamp" on the QuickTime viewer that you are referring to. Thanks!

--KH
  1. For your assignment, please respond to his request and give two excerpts from each video, and provide some observations about academic language that should be made about them.
  2. Also, these students in the videos are not second language learners. Please reflect in one or two paragraphs what it would mean for second language learners to have to learn appropriate academic language in these classrooms. Please also refer to the paper by Jim Cummins from the readings as background for these reflections.

Resources:

Solomon, J. & Rhodes, N. (1995). Conceptualizing Academic Language. Center For Applied Linguistics Washington, DC and National Center For Research On Cultural Diversity And Second Language Learning. http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu/miscpubs/ncrcdsll/rr15.htm

Wong Fillmore, L. & Snow, C. (2000). What teachers need to know about language. Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics.

Cummins, J.(1994). Primary language instruction and the education of language minority students. In. C. F. Leyba (ed.), Schooling and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework. Los Angeles: CSU Los Angeles and the California State Department of Education. (on Course CD#2).