Developing sociolinguistic awareness through a digital lexicon project in a fifth grade classroom in rural Alaska

Boynton, Julia F.

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Author

Boynton, Julia F.

Chair

Martelle, Wendy

Committee

Siekmann, Sabine
Patterson, Leslie

Abstract

This teacher action research examines how teachers can build student awareness of language variations in order to help students make meaning during the learning process thus bridging the gap between home discourse and school discourse. In this study students built a digital lexicon using a class generated list of Village English terms that are present in Aniak, Alaska. The purpose of this study was to build students' sociolinguistic awareness through explicit instruction and the Aniak Digital Lexicon project. The findings showed that providing students with explicit instruction helped develop students during their meaning making process and students were able to differentiate between Village English and Standard Academic English. The findings in this research study can be used to inform educators interested in teaching students about language variations and in particular learning about their own dialectal variation of English.

Description

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2019

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Teaching background -- Focus of my teacher action research -- My research questions -- Importance of this TAR to the education field and teachers -- Chapter 2: Literature review -- Meaning making -- Design cycle -- Multilingual meaning making -- Translanguaging -- Multimodal meaning making -- Task-based language teaching -- Description of Village English -- Village English in Aniak -- Sociolinguistic awareness -- Conclusion -- Chapter 3: Research methodology -- Research questions -- Study design -- Teacher Action Research -- Constructivist grounded theory -- Setting -- Participants -- Instructional plan -- Research procedures -- Chapter 4: Analysis -- Purpose of study -- Instructional procedures -- Meeting the meaning makers -- Analyzing student artifacts and discussions -- Introducing dialect and understanding students' linguistic knowledge base -- What I learned from the KWL and what I did next -- How my students understood dialectal variations across the United States -- How students made sense of formal and informal language -- Informal and formal letters -- Introducing students to the term Village English -- Aniak digital lexicon book -- What students learned about Village English and standard academic English -- What I learned from my students -- What I learned about my instruction -- Chapter 5: Conclusions, implication and future research -- What I learned about explicit instruction on language variations -- What I learned about language awareness through students creating a digital lexicon -- Implications for educators -- What I learned about TAR -- Conclusion and future research -- References -- Appendices.

Date

2019-12

Type

Thesis

Collections

Linguistics